Owning My Happiness

Happiness is a cruel mistress, I have held her, made love to her, but she never lets me keep her, or worse yet I have let her go while chasing ghosts. It is the ultimate tease to me. She lays there just out of my reach offering glimpses of what life could be. But like water it runs through my hands, no matter how tightly I grasp my fingers she still slips away.

Now I sit here and I look back at those times I held happiness and with a whim I let it go. I didn’t appreciate the beauty of it or realize how rare it was. I thought there would always be something better, something shinier. I found that all the glitters is not gold, the glitter was simply reflecting something I already had, but I let it go to chase that reflection. Then it was gone.

I am discovering that happiness is not a commodity, not chattel to trade for. There is no commerce in my life that can purchase euphoria. It only arrives when I have opened to it and lay vulnerable with the prospect of simply accepting it.

Some tell me the answer is in owning belief in me, but the only ownership I have ever known is external, cars, homes, things that have clear and evident price tags. The harder I have tried to shape my life and create wealth to receive happiness the further it has moved away.

The further down this path I follow now, the closer I get to understanding that perhaps joy isn’t meant to be held and controlled, it isn’t meant to fill me, but instead pour over me – wash me and allow me to feel new again, even if just for the moment.

Perhaps it isn’t about eternal happiness, perhaps it’s about moments, great moments that create memories. And in my darkest hours I can look inside and look back and sit in those moments and see the joy.

Tonight I shall sit and remember where I have been, many of you will be in my mind. I shall smile.

Namaste my friends