“A certain darkness is needed to see the stars” - Osho

This is my favorite quote. I love it so much that I have it tattooed on myself. In only nine words, it conveys how the hardships in your life serve a purpose: to give you an appreciation of your triumphs. Happiness isn’t black and white, it is a spectrum. If everything is always jolly and you have no challenges or failures or heartbreaks, you have an entire end of your spectrum missing. How are you supposed to recognize how fortunate you are if you have no contrast in your feelings? We need contrast in our lives to understand where in the spectrum we really are.

But being unhappy is becoming glorified. Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook - they are all overflowing with positive posts about being sad, about how it feels to be depressed, about being alone and lost. I understand the importance of embracing negative things in life; adversity makes us tougher, makes us more grateful, makes us who we are. But what doesn’t make sense to me is why people are making their entire spectrum black, why they are choosing to find negativity in every situation, why people no longer think they can be happy without a miracle, and why being miserable is becoming the norm.

People are no longer using their darkness to bring out their stars, rather, they are letting it engulf the light. They are habitually depressed because that’s what they choose to focus on. If you ask someone about their day, unhappy people will pick out the negativity while happy people will pick out the positivity. This isn’t necessarily because unhappy people have more bad things happen to them, it’s because bad things are what they choose to focus on, so that is what they remember.

Being on social media, it is easy to get consumed by this idea that it’s romantic or admirable to be sad, and because of this, people are choosing to focus on the misery in their lives. But they have it all backwards. By focusing on negative things that happen to them, they are committing to memory their sadness; they are making it impossible for themselves to even be happy. Instead, they need to understand their spectrum. They need to understand that even things as simple as feeling the wind blow through your hair, getting three green lights in a row on the way to work, watching the sunset, or seeing a cat in a window can be enough to make you happy in life. They need to understand that failing a test, spilling coffee, or breaking up with a significant other may suck, yes, but in 20 years, none of it will matter. These small things are all in this weird grey part and by choosing to discount the little things that bring you joy, and focusing on the little things that are inconvenient and annoying, you are setting yourself up to be unhappy. It is important to understand that it is okay to be happy, even if you are in a grey area.

Happiness can be found even in the tiniest of things, but only if we choose to acknowledge it. Who cares if you forgot a homework assignment or if you got cut off by an old lady in traffic and all your fries spilled on the floor of your car? Focusing on these insignificant things will make you unhappy, and it’s not worth being unhappy over a few lost fries. You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you react and what you focus on.

We all deserve a carefree and joyful life. Never for a moment think that it’s okay to constantly feel miserable, no matter how normal social media makes it seem. So try to appreciate things throughout the day that make you happy, even if they are grey. If you mentally take note of the good things that happen, at the end of the day, these moments will be what stick with you. You have the ability to shift your entire frame of mind and make it easier to be genuinely happy with life.