Create your own happiness

Suffering from crippling depression and anxiety - creating my own happiness is one of the main purposes in my life, what a journey is has been. I have not made it to the destination, but I can understand something clearly at last and I know it is possible to find/create happiness in any situation in life, no matter the amount, no matter what. No matter how small the measure of this feeling is - it can overcome any other negativity.

Happiness seems to be the ultimate goal for humans. A natural impulse in which we must satisfy in order to continue to proceed moving forward. Most of our actions are in hopes of leading to us being able to experience this feeling of being happy.

What is happiness? For every single person, the idea is perceived differently. This is probably why the world is not as united as we all have specific wants and needs, different visions of what we recognize as achieving 'happiness'. We are all in search of our own view on happiness, but how do we satisfy the wants and needs of every aspect in every single person? How can we as a species keep every single person 'happy' when the definition is endless and interpreted in so many ways? On Google the definition reads as follows "Happiness is used in the context of mental or emotional states, including positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy". This feeling is desired and pretty much hunted down by each and every one of us. Why does is it seem that this feeling is truly becoming so scarce and only available temporarily?

As years have gone on, I believe that the idea of happiness has been manufactured into a certain idea in which we now all identify with as achieving 'happiness'. Yet, in recent years the numbers are only increasing in cases of people suffering from depression, anxiety and all kinds of mental issues only make the idea of happiness seem unachievable. Happiness is however such a wide-ranging term which really cannot be linked to one certain category. Some people refer to happiness being broken down into 3 categories: Pleasure, passion, and purpose. These can then be further broken down into more specific factors, in which the list could go on forever.

Financial happiness, I believe, is a vision in which is stopping so many people from realizing the other kinds of happiness in our lives. The idea that money can buy happiness has really thrown people off the path of achieving ultimate, true forms of happiness. The materialistic views in which we identify as doing 'well' in life, have made us almost blind to the other parts in our lives that bring, or should bring us happiness. The system put in place has put our happiness in money, the middleman which leads us to the items, people and services that truly bring us joy. The idea of no having financial abundance is stressful, this stress truly takes away our ability to see the small doses of happiness around us every day - because it is not linked with the idea of how a majority population view life circumstances that lead to true happiness. Therefore, I believe the poorest countries with populations robbed of this form of financial happiness are however overflowing with spiritual joy and happiness. They are not bombarded with materialistic judgmental views on what should bring you happiness. They have been deprived of these luxuries, yet they are in ways some of the happiest souls you will find. They are not dependent on this idea to be happy.

I strongly believe that in every moment, there are factors, no matter how big or how small in which you will find bring happiness. These small moments may not come close to the levels of joy brought when say, I do not know, winning big on a lottery ticket. Sometimes, I see our generations being so hungry for happiness, that we have become greedy. In the sense that we do not want tiny amounts of happiness produced naturally over the long course of our lives, we want big rewards and vast amounts of joy which honestly cannot be rewarded to every soul on our Earth. Our demand has become unachievable for soul on our planet. However, being constantly being presented with ideas of living, makes us think that we must be doing something wrong. We look around and start to compare and question, "could something else bring me more happiness?".

We must remember that we all, as different as we all are, are all on a mission to make our happiness come to life. Some have disregarded other people and their means for happiness in order to gain personally set goals which only bring happiness to a certain group. People with power, whether this be in the form of financial, political, coercive, referent or any type of upper hand must not be so numb to the happiness of others. The consideration for ultimate, equal means which allow everybody to experience this has yet to be seen. This is again because we must accept that we do not have the same views of our ultimate happiness. However, we must respect these views, within reason, and compromise and work together to achieve all these factors. I am not saying we must be ridiculous and spoil every person wants and needs, because that is more like a dream come true. I understand it is achievable, but just the idea of changing and restoring the ideas of happiness in each single person's mind is already a mission itself. In achieving this however, I believe the first task will become much more obtainable. The idea that the levels of happiness can rise makes me so happy. I am referring to happiness produced by the soul. Not happiness, which is produced after feeding the ego, greed, self-indulgence, acquisitiveness, possessiveness, overconsumption and so on.

In saying this, as I have grown up I can see that people are slowly but surely realizing this is a real issue which is blinding the people of this Earth. We are the children of the people who were blinded. Growing up, I would say with more intuition for others, the linking between mental health issues and past and current issues, or ability to share these stories online with one another through music, books, movies, stories. Through our experiences of what we feel in our everyday lives. We are starting to make those connections and see what it is we crave that will indefinitely bring happiness, it is part of our anatomy. We must just search in our minds, not just in our current lifetime, what will make all of us happy once again?