Every holiday season, cards and e-mails arrive with tales of success and happiness. Similar news is heard at holiday parties or during chance meetings. All is well! Couldn't be better! Things are great for everyone, it seems, as if we live in a world that Frank Capra created. Recurring interactions of equal depth will reinforce this perception. The news is always good. Everyone is just swell.
But a pattern keeps occurring: when confiding in close friends, facile exchanges cease and the truth of struggles and difficulties emerge. Troubles can be found beneath the wholesome PR sheen of the quick update.
No stranger to struggle myself, I'm disheartened and surprised to discover how many friends and loved ones are having tough times. It makes me wonder if anyone really is happy, and what would give us happiness. Is life simply unbearably hard, or do many not possess the tools to navigate it easily? Have we been trained by saccharine fiction to expect life to hold simple resolutions and happy endings? Has our world evolved into a place that can no longer sustain us mentally? And why do we try so hard to conceal our struggles? Is it because we're trying to hide them from others, or ourselves?
I have no answers.
Perhaps I just happen to know many unhappy people, and most others are truly happy. I may feel this way only because I've become jaded and cynical. But if I'm wrong, it's after years of bearing witness to misery. The only way to know for sure is to push past the PR to get to the truth.
So tell me: are you happy?
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2 comments:
i'm happy. i believe the way to happiness is to have no goals. then you'll never be disappointed. there are other simple joys of my life--sunshine and all the great people i know. for everyone, it's different. you just gotta find what makes you happy. could be as simple as a video game. we all have to make money in order to live comfortably. hopefully doing something that doesn't beat you down. but if you find a happy balance and are not constantly striving for more more more all the time, you can be happy...
I am happy because Jesus walks with me.
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