Throughout my life, I’ve met too many people who aren’t happy. I don’t mean teenagers who hate their parents because they can’t get a tattoo, or young adults who haven’t found themselves yet. I mean real adult people who are living their lives in a way that doesn’t please them or make them happy to be alive. This kind of life is disappointing and, quite frankly, frightens me. One of my biggest fears is looking back on my life and seeing that I wasn’t happy.
We all go through periods in our lives where we aren’t thrilled to be doing what we’re doing, whether it be school, a job, a living situation or just the people around us. That’s all OK, because these things are viewed to be temporary: “I’ll be done with school in four years, and then I can finally do what I want.” But what happens when this temporary state turns into much more? What happens when the job I was only supposed to work for a year turns into getting an award for 10 years? That’s where my fear comes in.
If there is anything I want from this life, it’s to be happy. No matter what that means. Being happy may be working a low-wage job that I feel rewards me. It may be getting married and having a family. It may be moving somewhere tropical and working as a bartender part-time and sitting on the beach the rest of the time. I don’t really know what happy means for me yet. But I don’t want to get up every day and hate my life and my job. I want to love my job and feel privileged to do what I do — to never stop wanting to learn. This requires me suffering through a few more years of school than I would like, but I’m willing to do that to get to where I want to be.
Happiness doesn’t always come from external sources, I know. Most of it comes from inside. But a portion of it does come from external sources. Or the external source causes a chain of events that contributes to internal happiness. Like working a job I love, which is an external thing, but working this job makes me feel rewarded and helpful, which is internal.
Happiness is different for everyone. No one person experiences happiness the same as another, and that’s the beauty of it. I just want to find what happiness means to me. I can’t wait for the day that I do.
