Are you happy?

Do you have to be?

Happiness is an emotion, not a state of being.

It comes and goes like any other feeling and is not something you achieve or obtain and then just have indefinitely.

It’s okay to be unhappy, even if you have many of the things society tells you that should make you so.

Let yourself have unhappy days. Release the things that you think will “bring you happiness” from the burden of the impossible.

The next promotion, a new relationship, the dream achievement or recognition. The joy of obtaining the long sought after thing is always followed by the dizzying uncertainty of what is next.

The hardest part of all your dreams coming true is needing to come up w new dreams.

In the pursuit of happiness, it’s easy to miss (or not give ourselves permission to find) the joy in the chase. There’s pleasure in the yearning, delight woven into even the hardships or disappointments.

But it’s easy to mistake contentment for settling, to dismiss satisfaction and pride for hubris. “This is not happiness,” we tell ourselves. “We are not there yet,” we mutter, as we pass the fleeting pockets of pleasure without letting ourselves slow or stop to rest and enjoy.

But if we can remember happiness is fleeting by nature, is sand slipping through fingers or sunshine in Seattle in winter or the neighborhood cat who stops by on their own whims, here for a moment then vanished seemingly forever but actually still lurks just around the corner—

If we remember that, perhaps we can make more room for lowercase happiness to find us more often, resting in the quiet in betweens. 💙