Is there an illusion of happiness or is happiness one of those things that feel like an illusion to you? Happiness is really everywhere. All you have to do is walk by a playground and you can practically smell the happiness. And yet we look at the carefree playing of children and determine that those days were nice, but over. Why? Our happiness is not attached to an age. Sure, our teens might have been a little rough but then we wouldn’t be part of the national rite of passage had they not been. Happiness isn’t about being young, it is about being free on the inside.
I read a story about a concentration camp survivor once. He was a man of pure and tender happiness even in the face of terrible tragedy. His fellow Jews felt that his happiness was disrespectful to the loss that encompassed the camp. He simply looked around, his joy apparent, and explained that the Nazi’s could take his home, his family, and his money, but they did not have a right to his happiness.
There is a lot about happiness that we have yet to learn. We do not know exactly what makes us happy but we recognize happiness when it drowns us. We are busy people, and it seems that we are willing to trade our homes, our family, and our money to the corporate world. It seems that many of us are also willing to trade our happiness.
