Will Your Path Make You Happy?
What is important to me is that I live a good life, and am happy more often than not.
We all have different priorities. Nobody’s emotions are exactly the same. While we may give our emotions the same names, odds are how they feel to each of us differs.
Taking that another step, what makes me happy is going to be different from what makes you happy. Not just because of how it may feel differently to each of us, but because the what of happiness is such a wide perspective.
Right now our society is beset by people who care about nobody but themselves. Business leaders and government officials have been particularly selfish and uncaring. Many see the world as a pie, but a singular, small, limited pie, with only a few slices to go around. Rather than use their ability to produce unlimited pie, they hoard what they have and try to convince everyone else that this is the truth.
There is not enough pie to go around. I am going to take this all for myself, and none for you. Of course, if they viewed this as limitless instead, we would all have more to share, more to give, more in general.
The Universe is vast beyond our ability to comprehend it. Further, the Universe is abundant. This is not a place of lack and want, it is a place of more than enough and plenty. It’s important to recognize this because I believe that a tremendous amount of our unhappiness comes from feeling lack.
We all want to feel.
This is something we often deny. I think one of the reasons for the popularity of the notion of Vulcans in Star Trek is the lack of emotion. When you don’t feel emotion, you don’t feel want, and as such you don’t feel lack or loss. Emotions are viewed as weakness, and showing them often is considered socially unacceptable.
Thing is, like it or not, we are emotional creatures. Humans feel things. Good and bad, happy and sad, ecstatic and angry, and everything in between – having emotions is part of the human experience. Taking this out further, I believe that the thing we most want from our lives is to feel positive emotions.
Why do you do the things you do? Because at the end of the day, you want to feel good. Yes, this is a generalization, but I believe that most of us want to experience good things in our lives. We want to be happy, or at least content, with the lives we lead.
It’s all well and good to just be. If that makes you happy, then more power to you. But if you are displeased with life more often than otherwise, I am pretty sure that you are probably working to find ways to be more content. Means to be happier.
Pathwalking is about choosing for ourselves how our lives are to be. Yes, that involves working towards goals, some of which are material. But even the material goals are meant to be part of something more, something greater. My goal may be to become a best-selling author, but WHY I want to achieve that is because in the end, I believe that that will make me happy.
Happy and nature versus society.
We have been presented with a pretty standard expectation of what life should be. There is a widespread belief on the part of our society for what we should be doing, how we should be living, and what we should expect. While on the one hand we encourage people to dream and strive to grow bigger than they are, on the other hand we discourage them from stepping away from the common. Often we tell them that taking their own path is fraught with risk, and an unacceptably low chance of reward.
Is it any wonder our society often seems kind of schizophrenic? We tell you that this is the land of opportunity, but then we advise you not to take a chance. You get told that you should strive to be more than you are, but then people tell you they’re afraid you’ll fail. We play on fear so frequently that we find that state of being to be perfectly ok.
I for one do not want to live in a state of fear. Life is too short and too full of possibilities for me to accept that fear should dominate me. Yes, things can happen to you when you take a risk…but things can also happen to you when you DON’T take chances. We often are lead to believe that it’s better not to try at all than to try and fail.
Do you know what our world would be like today if many of the great innovators had accepted that? If they had not tried and failed and tried again, so many modern conveniences we take for granted just would not exist. Sometimes failure is the best teacher.
In the end it’s all about emotions.
Frequently the things we want are material. From the physical like cars and homes and jewelry to the abstract like good jobs, great relationships and wealth, these are tangible things. Yet why do you think you want the tangible things you want? Because you believe they will make you happy.
This is part of why we all want different things. What makes me happy is going to be different from what makes you happy, him happy, her happy, them happy, and so on. We all want different things, and even when we want similar things they may be for different reasons. My point is, the things we want are actually manifested tangibles of the intangibles we truly desire.
I do not know anybody who wants to be unhappy. Even the people I know who seem to take some sort of pleasure in being frequently miserable do not actually desire for that to be their state of being. In the end, the paths we walk are lead to a good emotional place.
Acknowledging this can go a long ways towards understanding ourselves better. When we recognize that we have emotional needs, I believe we can do better with our self-care.
Last and certainly not least – you deserve to be happy. Really, truly, you do. You are worthy of having a good and happy life. I know that may be hard to believe sometimes – I certainly struggle with it. But it is unequivocally true.
How do you think the things you want from your path will make you happy?
This is the three-hundred-first entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for and my personal experiences with walking along the path of life. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.
