happiness.

I've been procrastinating this post for quite some time now, but with a thousand things going a thousand different ways in my life I felt like now was a good time to express my thoughts. A little disclaimer, this is not a blog post to tell anyone how to be happy or how to live a certain way but maybe someone will be able to relate with me and go with it.

I feel like happiness is determined off of what you hear, see, or read from other people's lives. Instagram posts, Facebook updates, your Twitter feed; these are places to go and see 20% of someone's life, but yet we think we're seeing the 80%. In a society and community like Utah, we (myself included) are afraid to follow a gut feeling that may lead us off the well worn path of living life. Growing up, the insecurity of not having friends lead me to acting in ways to please a certain friend group, to mimic them, to try and become one of them, and essentially to develop traits that were far from who I really was. Education is not the main factor in going to school now a days, it seems as if clothes, trends, pictures, likes, favs, gossip, and unrealistic life styles are flooding our thoughts as we grow up, molding the aspect of happiness into something completely different than what it really is. I often ask myself whenever I'm busy, stressed, overworked, confused, concerned, etc... what's happiness? I realize that I focus too much on the question, "what's happiness?" rather than inserting myself into the equation and asking "what's MY happiness? The world will say that happiness and contentment develop from a lot of things such as making a lot of money, having a six pack or a "sexy" body, wearing clothes that are "in" yet clothes that others haven't seen or purchased before, being popular, having a bunch of followers on social media, having a nice car, having a big house, getting a degree, etc... and in a more local sense I will hear that happiness comes from participating in religious events and congregations. Do I believe that every single one of these things can bring happiness? Absolutely. Have I felt happiness from a lot of these things? Absolutely. These things are pieces to add to the puzzle but sometimes people have a different puzzle and these pieces of happiness won't fit their lifestyle and that should be socially acceptable and okay but unfortunately it's not, and that's where judgement and false expectations come into play.

My happiness comes from two things: Empathy and Connection.

Have you ever explained your feelings to someone but they reacted in a way that was contrary to those feelings because of their own beliefs or their own thought process? If you're like me, this happens a lot. This is apathy (the opposite of empathy). So many of us want to be a "safe place" for other people but when someone actually decides to come to us, being completely vulnerable and open with their concerns and their life, we express apathy in our opinions rather than empathy because of our preset thoughts. Apathy and Empathy can affect happiness on SO many levels. Simply telling someone, "I'm sorry to hear that, I'm here if you need anything," is a form of apathy or poor sympathy and we're taking the easy way out, rather, if we took an approach to saying something like, "I'm sorry to hear what happened, I can only try to put myself in your shoes but I really don't know what you're going through, I appreciate that you opened up to me and I'd love to talk more about it to see what we can do," this is a form of empathy and shows that you actually care about someone.

3 years ago God was a distant belief to me, something that that I believed in because my parents had taught me so. I would hear people talk about the joy and happiness people felt from knowing that God was real. I'm a literal type of person so whenever I'd hear people say things like, "I know" this and that to be true, I automatically assume that they have had a clear spiritual experience with something or someone divine from above. I've never had that experience (even though that'd be something cool to write about) but I went through a "mini life" experience that allowed me to realize that the aspect of connection makes me purely happy. That "mini life" experience was me living in Belgium and the Netherlands for two years serving as a volunteer for my church. I prefer using a "mini life" experience to describe my time in Europe because it wasn't simply joyful, fun, exciting, driven, etc...

It was hard.

There wasn't a day that went by during those two years where I had the thought, "Oh today was easy." The amount of rejection, harassment, limitations, expectations, comparisons, and judgement was heavy. I was put in a situation to figure out who I was as a person because I had no escape. If I came home early to try and take an alternative route, I would have experienced a new list of negativity that I probably wouldn't have been able to handle. For two years I had the opportunity to serve the most humble, direct, loving, and terrible people that I've ever met in my life and that is something that is indescribable. My goal wasn't to achieve a quota, convert people, try to impress anyone, try to come home a specific person, no, my goal was to find a connection to God because He was always a fictitious being in my life. I found that connection. Would I have found the connection without all of the complications? I don't know. Did my experience allow me to say to myself, "I know that God is real?" No. I believe with all my heart that God lives and I treasure that belief more than anything else in my life. Finding a connection to God is not defined as universal happiness, but it is my happiness. Empathy to others and the circumstances that they go through affect my attitude in the most positive way I can ever imagine. When you're able to understand and feel a little bit of someone's pain, to walk through something difficult with someone, and to be open to those emotions, that opens my eyes. Happiness is and will always be different for every single person and that is something that I will always do my best to respect, but if you don't know what your happiness is quite yet, isn't it worth finding?

Find your connection.