To many of us it seems as though happiness is just out of our reach, every time we get close it somehow manages to elude our grasp. After continuously failing to attain this happiness that we seek, it might just be easier to give up. Who needs happiness anyways? At times it feels like we don’t deserve happiness, but that is a dangerous way to think about the situation. I’ve had many different views on what happiness is and how to get it and these ideas of happiness change with the situations I’m in.

In times of sadness, where happiness is just eluding us, we have only ourselves to blame. In those times we aren’t trying nearly as hard as we should. We have found ourselves in what seems to be an inescapable rut of unhappiness. Instead of digging ourselves deeper into the absence of happiness that consumes us by risking failure again, we accept the constant state without happiness and without sadness because that seems like a better alternative compared to only sadness. When we’re not happy, it is worth not being happy as long as we aren’t sad.

Comparatively when we are happy, we tend to take more risks and actively seek happiness more often. Happiness seems to be a numbers game, the more often you actively seek it out the more happiness you’ll experience. We don’t think about that while it’s happening of course, that tends to be more of an afterthought.

It seems somewhat silly, that happy people are going to be happy and sad people are going to be sad. It’s true though, if we are already happy we are more likely to go out and seek happiness. Similarly, if we are sad then we are more likely to avoid risks to avoid further pushing ourselves into the sadness we hate.

The easy solution would just be to act happy even if we aren’t. The one thing I’ve learned throughout the years is that if you act a certain way and keep on acting that way, then you can convince even yourself that the way you’re acting is the way you truly are. Tricking yourself and others may not seem like the right way to handle the situation, but once in awhile we have to think about the greater good of ourselves.

It is my personal opinion that we all deserve happiness, even the worst of us. Out of the three unalienable rights we have, I value the pursuit of happiness just a little bit more than the others. We cannot sell ourselves short and assume that happiness is unattainable, happiness is out and ready for us to capitalize upon. We must take the risks and actively pursue what we deserve most.

More than looking for happiness and going after something to help ourselves, the most important thing we can do is to try and be a source of happiness for other people. We live in a world full of cynics and doubters, people who don’t believe in happiness; for every person who tries to be the happiness in someone else’s life, you make the world a better, happier place.