What is Happiness?

By now you should ‘see’ smoke coming out my ears…from all the thinking I’ve been doing lately. After my recent post I’m Not Marriage Material (by the way – thank you for all the awesome comments & emails you all sent me about that post!) I did some more thinking.

I found myself wondering what is happiness?

That of course sent me down memory lane and I remembered how messed up my way of thinking used to be. I seriously used to have a warped sense of thinking. There was a big long list of things I needed to achieve before I would ever be happy.

• Wouldn’t be happy until I lost all the weight I needed (need) to lose
• Wouldn’t be happy until I had a boyfriend
• Wouldn’t be happy until I got married
• Wouldn’t be happy until I was driving a nice car instead of all the old jalopies I drive
• Wouldn’t be happy until I was making enough money to allow Caleb to have things he wanted (and me too)
• Wouldn’t be happy until family/friends accepted my working at home and stopped telling me to go get a J-O-B
• Wouldn’t be happy until I had a house
• Wouldn’t be happy until I could travel and take all the vacations I wanted/want

And those are just to name a few! The list could go on and on but I won’t bore you to death. The list was even as shallow as I wouldn’t be happy until I was making enough money to buy all name brand clothes, name brand shoes and name brand purses!

Happiness has taken on such a different meaning to me over the last couple years. And even now as I’m working with my counselor on my issues I’m realizing that happiness has nothing to do with any of the stuff I used to think it had to do with.

Happiness to Me is:

• Waking up every morning – I’m alive & that’s worth being happy over
• Waking up every morning knowing I don’t have to go to a J-O-B
• Having my apartment…going on 4 years now!
• Having a car that gets me from point A to point B…who cares it’s not brand new or the prettiest thing on the block? I don’t.
• Having clothes on my back…and they aren’t even name brand
• Having my son wrap his arms around me and say I love you mom
• Having the freedom to be involved in my son’s life…dropping him off & picking him up from school, being able to participate in school activities, etc.
• Having a steady stream of clients providing an income so that I can pay my bills
• The smell of rain
• Thunderstorms (well minus the big booms the thunder makes cause that scares me. LOL)
• Feeling a breeze blow against my skin or just feeling one come through my window
• Having friends both offline and online that care so much about me
• Having family around
• Knowing that I live in a country that I’m free to do so many things
• Knowing that I have created an awesome friendship with an amazing man that is serving our country in Iraq right now (obviously it doesn’t make me happy about any of the men & women over there in the midst of the war but I’m thankful there are those that are selfless enough to put their lives in danger to protect our country)
• Knowing that I’m stepping in the right direction (counseling, etc) to get my life on track to achieving the goals I have for myself
• That I’m learning to cook
• That I’m learning to speak up
• That I’m coming out of my shell/comfort zone more and more
• Babies and everyone around me that’s having them

I could go on and on with that list too. It’s amazing to me the difference in my thinking. I’ve also learned a lot by building a friendship with Seth. Talking to him while he’s in the midst of the war, facing danger every day has really put life in perspective for me. Life is so short. There is never a guarantee to tomorrow so why waste time being unhappy thinking that you have to have ‘certain things’ to be happy? It’s all about being content with what you have and where you are in life right now.