Happiness Is Just A Happy Thought Away

I want you to picture a child at the county fair.  Games, prizes, rides, animals, clowns, food, cotton candy, tons of people.  Picture that child picking up a baseball and throwing it at a stack of six cans in the shape of a pyramid, knocking the top one off with the first ball.  He picks up a second ball, misses completely, takes the third and last ball in his hand and throws with all his might.  It blasts into the remaining cans.  The child has a huge smile on his face as the cans fly into the air.  The man behind the booth grins as toothless smiling and starts clapping.  Are you smiling with them?  One can lands back on the platform, right on the edge.  The carny shakes his head looking almost as upset as the child.  The child hangs his head and slowly turns around to his parents with sadness written all over his face.  He reaches out for his dad’s hand and grabs it then looks up.  It’s not his dad, he grabbed a strangers hand.  The child frantically searches from face to face of adults walking around the booth looking for his dad, he’s nowhere to be found.  The child starts to panic, his heart is heavy, his eyes pouring tears as he feels his world closing in on him.  The whole park is spinning around him, flashes of light and colors, faces that he cannot distinguish, he’s lost.

Did your heart just get as heavy as the child’s heart?  Have you felt that feeling of completely hopelessness and despair?  Was it because you were lost, or you lost something?  What did you lose?  Dig down inside yourself and try to remember the last time you felt that down over something you may have lost, even if it was just yourself.  Can you picture it?  The feeling in your heart, the thoughts in your head?  Now take that feeling, hold onto it, we’ll come back to it.

Have ever cared so deeply for someone that once they were gone your whole world spun around you in a dizzying cyclone; nothing made sense, nothing was clear, you were lost without them.  This is a pretty common feeling for some people, those people are not bad people for being in this kind of situation.  In fact, a lot of times the people that are accustomed to feeling like that are really good people and have the biggest hearts of most.  These people are the ones who put themselves out there time and time again to try and find love, they are in touch with their emotions.  Sometimes they hide it until someone opens that feeling, then they are vulnerable.  No matter how many times they have been hurt, forgotten, left behind, they still do it because they believe in a thing called love.  They are the people that will be there in the end.  They are the nice guys that “finish last”, or girls for that matter.  They accept you for who you are, flaws and all, and love you for them.  They may act tough, like you cannot hurt them, but if you leave you will crush them.

Chances are if you are reading this and cannot really relate to the child losing someone they care about, then you are the person who is truly lost.  You haven’t felt that connection for someone because you are too cold and callused to open yourself up to that emotion.  You probably have your reasons for being that way, you may have been like the child at one time, and then you put on your mask, you became someone else to shelter yourself from the pain.  It’s understandable if you are the person that was hurt and are now hiding from it.  It happens.  At the same time, how long do you plan on hiding?  How long do you really think you can wear that mask and be that callused person?  Are you going to find true love that way, or are you going to trick yourself into thinking it’s true love because that person does not test your boundaries?  Either way, it’s not worth it.

Do not mistake being vulnerable for being weak.  They are very different.  A person that is vulnerable to love means that they are susceptible to the idea, they are not trying to hide or protect themselves from it.  They are willing to accept it if it comes their way.  Being weak has nothing to do with love, it is more of an emotion elicited by fear.  Typically, the weakest people are the ones that are hiding from love.  They force themselves away from it, they do not let love come into their lives because of fear.  They fear for many different things; whether it’s fear of failing at love, being hurt by love, by actually enjoying being in love, or fear moving on from a past love.  I will not delve too deep into this weakness, because I am not versed well enough to being someone who hides from love.

I, myself, am vulnerable.  I am a hopeless romantic.  I enjoy love, I thrive when I am in love.  The euphoric feeling of having someone to share everything with is so overwhelming, it’s like a drug.  In a way, being in love is always that carnival or county fair.  There are all new sites and experiences.  True love is a rollercoaster.  You are on edge all the time, and that is not a bad thing.  It has it’s ups and downs, all relationships always do.  And quite frankly, who wants something that is just so “perfect” all the time.  Where is the fun there?  You need to be jerked to the side, flipped upside down, spiraling out of control, and thrust back into your seat; you need the adrenaline rush, the wind in your hair, the spinning feeling in your stomach.  YOU crave that, just as much as I do.  Because when you are on a roller coaster, eyes closed and in fear of your life or not, you are smiling.  Either on the inside or the outside.  And what do we want more than anything else in this world?  It’s not money, cars, or fame.

It’s happiness.  We all want to be happy.  Is money the most desired thing in this world?  Absolutely not.  Think about it.  Why do you want the money?  To just have it in the bank and not buy anything?  No.  You want to buy stuff, you want a new car and a new house and a big screen TV.  And why do you want these things?  Because they will make you HAPPY.  Happiness is what we all want.  If you think otherwise, you’re a fool.   Plain and simple, no ifs, ands, or buts.  We want to be happy, because happiness is what it is all about.  We all love to smile, we all love to feel good about ourselves, we all love to be happy.  It’s not because society says so, it’s because deep down inside ourselves we want to be happy.  Look back at the cavemen.  They hunted and gathered food, and for what reason?  To have their bellies full.  Because their instinct says “eat food, be full, make head happy”, in a nut shell.

You have been wondering your whole life what your purpose is here on this earth?  Well I just told you.  It’s to be happy.  Every living creature is put on this earth to be happy.  A plant is here to be happy.  How do I know this?  Because living and surviving is it’s only goal in life, that’s what it is there to do.  A plant is content on just living, that’s all.  If you don’t believe me that being content with life is happiness, Google it.  Upon typing “happiness” in Google search, this is what you will read: “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”  Now read that a couple times.  The fourth from last word in that sentence is “contentment”.  “Contentment” is a noun that can be defined as “a state of happiness and satisfaction.”  Just saying, you were put here to be happy.  Everyone has a different opinion on what makes them happy, some people could have some really messed up versions of happiness, but to each their own.  I am not here to tell you what makes YOU happy, only you can decide that.  I’m only here to tell you not to let anyone get in your way of happiness.  If you’re boyfriend or girlfriend does not make you happy, but they are “super cute”, get over your vain self and move on, it’s not good for you.

Find what makes you happy, hold on to it, make it your sole focus in this life.  You only live once, so make it worth it.  Pull out all of the stops and be happy, be happy for yourself.  Everybody alive today has a reason to be happy, no matter what society tells your or the media tells you, YOU have a reason to be happy.  If you woke up today, that is a reason to be happy.  Are you in poor health and you think that life would be better if you were not in pain, that it would be better if you moved on to the other side?  Think about it, your family, friends, and loved ones are still alive and there for you, you woke up today to be able to see them again, and that should make you happy.  Oh, your family is not there for you?   But you woke up today, you got to see the sun shining, that’s reason enough to be happy.  There is going to be a negative-Nancy about everything in life, a pessimist, always.  Always has been and always will be.  So make that a positive thing.  Be positive that there is going to be someone doubting you, and use that to make you happy to know that someone thinks about you enough to have that doubt.  You can find something in every situation in life to focus on, that will give some touch of happiness.  This has become my new focus in life, happiness.  Absolutely, I have been that lost child in the carnival, but I have found myself.  I’m not that scared little child anymore, I can look myself in the mirror and find myself every morning now, and that person is happy.  Happiness is just a happy thought away.