Episode 2: Happiness
Happiness is our birthright. We learn that we must earn it and how happiness should look. Happiness is having all your basic needs met and optimum physical and mental health. Unfortunately, half the world is barely living with half their basic needs met, and the rest are chasing what happiness looks like instead of creating their unique image of happiness.
Happiness doesn’t have an aesthetic. Happiness is just alignment and being authentic and one with all your facets. It’s a space where you can allow yourself to not just see yourself as who you truly are but a space where you can create who you desire to be.
People think happiness is always being in a good and positive mood. No, that’s toxic positivity because no healthy, compassionate person can be happy while the world burns around them. Compassion prevents us from being happy. Sure, you’ll be in a better mood most times when you are aligned, but true happiness is the freedom to be whatever you are.
Happiness is that intimate world that allows us to embrace new aspects of ourselves without shame or fear, that environment that will enable us to let go of things that no longer serve us healthily. But that is a privilege and not a right for all.
Judgment doesn’t exist in a happy place. Only observation does because it is a space where we feel safe enough to be all we can be. However, exercising such freedom can lose you a job, ostracise you from your community and even kill you.
Happiness is not a look or possession! It is safety, and most of us don’t feel secure and protected. Most people on this planet do not have a safe space to be in full communion with the self unapologetically. So, as much as happiness is an internally cultivated state, external, biological, or physical factors often impact its ability to exist. That happy space does not exist in a vacuum, unfortunately.
And, when some people finally push back against an oppressive system that doesn’t allow them to be happy and cultivate joy despite not fitting the aesthetic of happiness or lack of support, they get attacked. That’s why people get angry when fat people are happy despite not meeting societal beauty standards because joy is for those with a particular look. Or people get mad when gay people celebrate their happiness like everyone else and get accused of “forcing their lifestyles” on people.
Happiness is all our birthright, no matter who we are, where we come from, who we love and how we look. But, unfortunately, the world has made happiness something to earn and jump through hoops to have.
We deserve better. However, we can’t give up, no matter how the odds are against us. So, we implement mindfulness in our daily lives, ground ourselves in our authenticity, and embrace the world without judgment until such a day comes when happiness isn’t so challenging to attain.
Song of the day: The Bare Necessities – Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman
