Authentic Happiness & Life's KindnessAuthentic Happiness & Life's Kindness There was a time in my life when I was very confused and I was most definitely not filled with authentic happiness. My life had "turned out" just as I had imagined it would. I graduated school, I had a job and a nice place to live. I had friends, family, and a meaningful relatioship. When I looked to my future, it was filled with bright, cheerful days. The part that I had not planned on was how disorienting it was to accomplish my goals. Once achieved, I didn't know what to do next.
I began to feel unfulfilled and I couldn't pinpoint why. I tried all sorts of solutions: I switched from walking to jogging, I bought candles to create a home "nest", I tried reading different books, yoga, and on and on. As the months stacked up on eachother, my confusion mounted, and my days became hazier. My sense of time warped, each day seeming longer and more directionless than the last. I wondered how I would ever find authentic happiness again. My shiny future was now lack-luster. I had made the error of thinking that my life had "turned out", rather than recognizing that we all continue to grow and challenge ourselves. Life is growth and human beings are a part of life. Life does not stay stagnant and neither do we. One balmy day at the beach, my entire purpose suddenly flipped and my life started in a new direction. As I passed a lone woman walking in the sand, a bolt of energy shot through me and I heard a voice say to me, "What if you could help people get past the thoughts and feelings that cause them pain?" That question shattered the old lens through which I viewed life. I now saw that I was to put my life to good use for others. Despite the hot sun on my skin, I got a chill, because I knew that I was back on my path to authentic happiness. I saw that I had achieved goals for getting my own unique, fundamental needs met: an education, a job, and a home. But, when my life purpose flipped, it consequently flipped my goals, too. For the first time, I saw that getting my survival needs met was not how to measure the quality of my life. I recognized, deep down, the difference between earning value (money) and creating value which would lead to money. I knew that creating value was to be the focus of my next set of goals; it would bring an end to the months of struggle and confusion and I would find authentic happiness again. It did not mean that all I had done leading up to that moment was in vain, because, for me, learning how to earn money was an absolutely necessary prerequisite for learning how to create value. Everything leading up to that moment was done to help me to achieve goals that I didn't even realize I had. My consciousness was reawakened, my lurking doubts were banished, and I was energized with my new purpose - I felt authentic happiness once again.
It took a couple of months for me to fully internalize and understand that experience. My outward life did not change, but my mind was continuously seeking out ways to execute my new purpose. It was an endless process of trying to figure out what to do next. It was time to get after my deeper purpose. That is when my writing really took off. For a full year, I would come home after work to write. I was invigorated and each time I wrote, I felt really, really good. Writing began to take up my weekends, too, and I found myself voluntarily walking away from the TV to sit down with my journal. I was shaping my outer life to reflect my inner changes. I shifted from thinking about "getting ahead" to prioritizing authentic happiness, creating value, and trusting life. I had come to recognize that success as society defines it was not the same thing as being happy. It took me a long time to break that connection in my head. I had to unravel the tie of external achievement to long lasting internal bliss. My conditioned thinking was that working on my own achievements, instead of helping others, was the best route to happiness. I had to stop the "if, then" thinking that was leaving me unfulfilled: "If I get the house/promotion/husband, then I will be happy." I simply wanted to be happy anyway, just as I was. Everything I had done, all the choices I had made in the past had made me happy, but as I continued to grow, I wanted to experience new sources of happiness. My past way of living had not been wrong or misguided; it had worked and gotten me where I wanted to go. But, now I wanted to get after intangible, feeling based goals. In order to do that, I needed a new way of living my life. By prioritizing activities that made me feel happy and valuable I was changing my life. Occasionally, fear about my decision would pop up, but I reminded myself that nothing bad has ever come from my being happy. In fact, often more good tends to happen when I am happy and not just good things for me, but for others as well. In effect, my happiness creates real goodness for others; my happiness is a service to others. When I looked at it like that, I felt a kind of obligation to find authentic happiness. I saw, too, that Life was "talking" to me in my happiness by responding back in kind. The more happiness I give off, the more Life interacts with me and sends me what I need. When I share the goodness that is inside of me, I am putting it to good use. I am demonstrating to Life that I am capable of handling more and so it sends more my way. It sends things to those who put things to good use. Be happy; Life always responds with kindness.
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