Good morning and hello.
When I was young, I was happy all the time. Nothing could bring me down for long. I'm not sure why I was so happy all the time, but I was. At some point, something changed. It may have been a result of some life-changing stuff that happened. I can't be sure. But at some point, I stopped being so happy all the time.
These days, it seems like I'm never happy. Maybe I used up my 'happy' when I was young? I don't know. But I don't seem to have that constant happy feeling like I used to have. Don't get me wrong, I still have happy moments. I can enjoy joking with family or friends, or laughing at a funny TV show. But when I'm still, in a quiet moment, I am not radiating happiness like I once was.
For a long time I wondered why I can't seem to be happy anymore. Why do I always feel subdued, unhappy, unsettled? Why can't I get my 'happiness mojo' back? And so of course, I felt like something was wrong with me. I mean, if I'm not happy all the time, there must be something wrong with me, right? Or maybe not...
I've been reading about Buddhism for several years now, at least. And sometimes I have a thought, a revelation almost, that I realize comes from all that reading. This one is: There is NOTHING WRONG with simply being, without happiness. One of the main precepts in Buddhism has to do with misery and our confounded attempts to escape it. When we just 'sit' in our misery, instead of escaping it, we get a chance to know it, to explore it. By knowing our unhappiness, we have the opportunity to take away its power. We can accept it and go on with life. Thus taking away the misery associated with the source.
The wandering point here is that we don't have to be happy all the time, and we cause our own suffering by pursuing a false happiness, or trying to escape a false misery. We just, simply ARE.
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