Happiness - The Ultimate Accomplishment

I decided today to create one of my own inspirational posters similar to the ones I often see on social media sites. The picture was taken in my backyard...one of the reasons why I love where I live. A blazing spectacle of colors and light designed by greatest artist of all time (God himself!!) displayed for me on many occasions that reminds me of the wonderment and simultanoeus simplicity of the beauty of life.

Some days I struggle to be happy while many people around me are doing the same. And yet I always find peace in the moments when I close my eyes, breath in deeply and feel gratitude for just about anything and everything good that comes to mind.

Life will never be perfect...because it was not meant to be. Life was meant to be a struggle. It was meant to offer challenges, impose heartache and force you to endure through pain, inequality and injustice. Life was not meant to be fair. I think I am finally beginning to accept this fact. With that said, the greatest accomplishment in life is to be happy. That may sound obvious or it may sound cliche but in my opinion, it is a simple truth.

So if you find yourself tired of waiting for the perfect moments so you can be happy, then just give up and be happy while you're waiting!

The F-Word

I'm not sure which word you are expecting but the F-word I am referring to is actually FORCE.

You ever had a day when you just feel agitated? Either your angry or depressed, disappointed or tired, bored or frustrated: whatever the reason, you just feel agitated. As my sister calls it “your stuck in bad mood land”. Then you open your Facebook page and see the stream of positive quotes and supposed high-energy happy people reminding you Life is Short! Every Day is a Gift! It’s All In the Attitude! Gratitude Makes Life Better! It’s like everyone is forcefully saying “Be Happy Damn It!” And instead of feeling inspired and rejuvenated, you just want to take the happy I’m-so perfect-and-my-life-is-always-so great person, pluck them out of the little profile picture thumbnail, and drop kick them into the black hole of bad mood land!

I’m not being a sourpuss today. Actually I AM feeling blessed today and I made sure I waited until a good day to write this because I didn’t want to use my blogging post just to vent on one of my bad days. But I did want to say this: When you’re having one of those days and feel that way, I GET IT.

Who the heck wants to be FORCED to be happy?! That’s when Force becomes the F-word! You can’t force gratitude, you can’t force joy, you can’t force peacefulness, you can't even force that state where you just don’t feel much because you just don’t care enough. Sure, you CAN guide yourself to feeling positive but that is only if you are inspired or motivated enough to muster up the strength on that particular day. It’s not always easy to do and you shouldn’t feel bad if it doesn’t come naturally.

The point is, we all have bad days and we should be allowed to. We shouldn’t feel the need to be blissfully happy every moment of every day. Just as long as in the middle of the “shit happens” moment you are capable of closing your eyes, taking a deep belly breath and saying “I am NOT happy at this moment BUT that wont last”. You DON’T need to immediately “turn that frown upside down” (if I were reading this to you, you would know from the tone of my voice how sarcastic I’m being using that stupid phrase!) Life with all its daily struggles is hard enough, we don’t need to add the pressure of being constantly happy.

I have to admit, I am guilty as charged with trying to be uplifting and positive. I try to write from a place in my heart that is filled with compassion and hope while my ultimate desire is to inspire something beneficial to the human spirit. I consider it one of the best feelings in the world to be lucky enough to take credit for someone changing course from negative to positive. Personally, I love reading inspirational quotes because sometimes a few strong but sincere words are enough to break me out of a bad spell. It’s like to a slap in the face that does not sting but instead heals. 

But with all that said, I think everyone deserves a bad day now and then. You don’t want to be permanently stuck in bad mood land, but a couple hours or one day won’t kill your spirit. In fact, maybe we have to have those bad days once in a while so that we can compare them to the better days and that is when you can feel blessed. Blessed not because someone told you to feel that way, not because others tried to force you to that place of gratitude, but because you earned it through your crappy day experience and arrived there all on your own. 

Milk in a Champagne Glass

Champagne, adult-size black and white party hats, noise makers, confetti, liquor…lots of liquor, fancy clothes and an uninhibited “Let’s throw caution to the wind!” attitude. Sound familiar? On New Year’s Eve most of us have this crazy desire to send off the past year with a big bang, energized by newfound expectations, as if the next day the whole world will be functioning differently. Even if you are not one to care much for the party scene and prefer a nice quiet evening at home, most likely on 12-31 you will have some moments of reflection and thoughts of how you may want to do things differently next year. This is all good and fine, and apparently natural, but here is my question: Why can’t we treat every day like it is New Year’s Eve?

When the year comes to a close we choose to somehow acknowledge the close of one chapter and beginning of the next. You may be celebrating accomplishments of the past year or celebrating the fact that the year is over because (for lack of a better word) it sucked! Either way, we all find our own way of pressing our magic reset button that injects us with hope and anticipation of what is to come. Somehow the clock turning midnight is an automatic internal signal that triggers optimism. We reminisce, we recall heartache, we take pride in successes, we regret, we agonize over mistakes made, we fall into reverie daydreaming of how we will change for the better, we feel joy, we feel anger, we feel inspired, we feel bitter, we feel motivation bubbling and rising from the pit of our core. With all the myriad of feelings that are weaved together spontaneously, the resulting fabric of our spirit is infused with the bold color of hope.

Even when we are in turmoil and faced with devastation, the strength of the human spirit is that it moves forward with hope. Though we may feel hopeless at times, the fact is if you are alive then hope is present somewhere inside.

Thank God for hope!

So why can’t we treat every day this way? Every day could be like New Year’s Eve. We always have the opportunity to press our reset button, making every day the beginning to a new chapter. Every day accommodates the spirit of ambition. This year my personal goal is to treat every day as if it was the last day of the year. I’m going to close up loose ends every day, make attempts at achieving goals every day, examine my mistakes to attain wisdom every day, joyfully reminisce on events that make me happy every day and conclude with a celebration for being present in this crazy mixed up world every day! When I wake, every morning I want to pretend the clock just turned and a new year has just begun. I want to have hopeful thoughts and feel content that new things…good things…are to come. I’ll raise my champagne glass (ok, its morning so damn it, it will have to be filled with milk) and toast to the day that is inspired by nothing if not by ME! Milk in a champagne glass will symbolize my gratitude for the day and all that is yet to come. Toasting the day with milk rather than champagne may not be as fun, but at least I won’t have to worry about getting a DUI and I won’t have a hangover the next morning! Cheers!