Happiness: hard to define, but almost effortless to recognize. It is an instantaneous feeling, one that helps us to place value on those pieces of our lives that bring it about, and actively avoid others that subdue it. Whether it be a friend that knows just how to turn our day around, hobbies that we just have to fit into our busy schedules for the sake of our own sanity, or even the simple realization that, after much uncertainty, we have finally gotten ourselves to a place where things just feel right; it is important to recognize happiness as a way to better understand ourselves.

Sometimes, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. When everything seems to be heading in the right direction -- you have found great friends, you do work that you love, and you have a decently resilient sense of yourself -- happiness can seem lost. We might find glimpses of it but, given the circumstances, it should not seem so restrained. Why then, can happiness feel like it is missing?

Today, we live in a society where our lives are on display almost everywhere. Social media has done some amazing things, allowing us to connect with others in ways we could never do without it, but it has also created a platform upon which we are able to measure ourselves up against those we are connected with. It can be inspiring, as the notification of a new Instagram like can give us an immediate sense of gratification, but it can also be destructive. Just as fast as we can share something about ourselves, we can access these same things about others. It is almost impossible not to compare, and we often convince ourselves that in some way what our friends are doing is more significant, "cooler," and more satisfying.

What I'm trying to say is, we have started to replace true happiness with the small, fleeting moments of approval we get each day. And while adding all of these instances up makes us feel good, we aren't really feeling happiness at all. That effortless recognition of a feeling we so actively seek becomes pretty cloudy, and can immediately be replaced by exactly what we were trying to avoid: sadness. But thankfully, our happiness is not completely lost ... yet. We just have to start finding it in the right ways.

A good friend recently taught me that one of the hardest lessons we can learn in life is how to be happy in our own loneliness. And while she was talking about physical loneliness (a whole other topic of conversation), I think there is even more to be said about the metaphorical sense of the word. If you remove all outside forces -- all judgments, all opinions, all interactions -- what is it that makes you truly happy? What activities, people, moments, whatever it may be--bring about that instantaneous, full feeling of bliss? Once we can recognize these in isolation, we must commit them to memory, and actively seek them out over the smaller, insignificant ways we have felt satisfaction in the past. It is not easy to do, but it can help us to reach an understanding of ourselves that almost nothing else can reveal, and teach us to rise above the superficial trap society has set for us. For as Martha Washington once famously said, "The greatest part of our happiness depends on our disposition, not our circumstances." Once we can recognize that, we have won.