Don't worry. Be happy... Yeah. Easier said than done.

I wish it was simple to be a happy person. Or to even lead a happy life. I'm not referring to the kind of "happy" where the sun always shines, birds always sing and every single detail of your life falls into place perfectly. Sorry, Elle Woods. Not everyone can live their lives being legally blonde. No, I'm talking about the kind of person who, at the end of the day, has no regrets about their actions. The kind of person who doesn't have to wonder about how many people they hurt, or how many other people's dreams they had to step on to reach their own. Who feels certain that they did their best to live up to their own code of ethics and morals, regardless of which faith (if any) they follow, and doesn't feel that they compromised themselves for others. It should be easy, shouldn't it? To be a happy person. To enjoy life to it's fullest extent, the way it should be enjoyed... Then why does it seem like being happy is the hardest thing to be?

From the moment you enter this world kicking and screaming, society immediately lays down the rules it expects you to follow and the ideas it expects you to believe. And when you boil all these rules, expectations, and ideas down to their basest levels, what you're left staring at is society's definition for happiness. Money, cars, huge houses, hot sex, the hottest arm candy of the week... this is what society tells us will make us happy, will make our lives complete and perfect and fulfilling. But are these things really all they're cut out to be? Yes, I'll admit that they make your life easier and maybe even more enjoyable on occasion, but I can't admit that easier necessarily means happier. Couple the ongoing brainwashing you're exposed to from birth with the expectations that society, parents, friends, religion etc. constantly heap upon you, how the hell are you supposed to know what makes you happy? 

I think some people are lucky enough to find something or someone that helps them to make sense of the chaotic world that we find ourselves living in. Whether it's drawing, playing an instrument, writing poetry, finding yourself between the covers of a book, or even being in the company of the person you love, the feeling you get from that is the closest I think I can come to describing happiness. When you feel the most at home in your own skin, when all the exterior noise quiets down to that perfect silence where you experience emotions and feelings ten times as poignantly as you normally would, I think that's what completes you. But what if you never find that one thing that makes you feel complete? 

And if even if you are lucky enough to find something or other that does make you happy, regardless of whether it falls within the parameters society defines or not, to what extent do you have the right to pursue it? What if the only way you could truly be happy meant that someone else had to be unhappy? Who has the greater right? And what if being happy hurts the people you love around you? What's the greater sin: A life of happiness at the expense of those you care about or a miserable existence where everyone you love is enjoying life? 

I seem to find myself always asking the same questions, and never getting the answer I'm looking for. I'm starting to think that there is no such thing as true happiness... Just weary resignation. And a sad acceptance of an existence that sometimes doesn't seem worth going through all this shit for.