: Happy [hap•pee] adj. hap-pi-er, hap-pi-est 1. Delighted, pleased, or glad over a particular thing Sad [sad] adj. sad-der, sad-dest 1. Affected by unhappiness or grief What is happiness? A man named Shay Carl once said, "Happiness is a choice." Ever since I heard this statement, I have analyzed it over and over again and changed my mind on whether or not I thought it was true or false. But finally, one day, it hit me. You can't always be happy. There are days when you trip getting out of bed, you spill your coffee, you miss your bus, your teachers yell at you and it seems like nothing is going your way. Other days, it may not be a certain thing that gets you down in the dumps, but you still can't get that feeling of happiness back. Sometimes, it just feels like there is an unbreakable wall between you and joy, and you have no idea how to get around it, so instead you just sink into the sadness that you think, at that moment, is the only way of #life. But it's not. I used to think that as long as you can be more happy than sad, you're ok. But if you're happy fifty-one percent of the time, that means that forty-nine percent of the time, you're not. That means if you live to be one hundred, you would not have been happy for forty-nine years. Seventeen thousand, eight hundred ninety two days of unhappiness. Twenty-five million, seven hundred seventy-one thousand, four hundred eighty nine and a half minutes of feeling like there is no hope. Do you want to live that way? I don't. I want to try to get the most out of this #life before I die. #life is so beautiful, so precious. I don't want to feel like, for forty-nine percent of my #lifetime, that there is even the slightest reason to want to end it. But within saying that, not all days are bad days. You might feel as though, after a while, sadness is all you know. And even on good days, you could actually start to push yourself down and look at the bad things to make yourself sad, because at that point it's all you know how to do. "Because that's the thing about #depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It's mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep and wrap myself in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time." This #quote is by Stephanie Perkins. This, for me, rings out truth in every single word. But that's where you do have a choice. You CAN be happy. You have the power to look at the good things instead of the bad. It's like thinking of We Scare Hunger. Are there still families out there that need food? Yes. But think of how much, as a community, we have helped. Of course you could look at the homeless person on the street and think of all the bad in the world. But instead, you could also choose to focus on the smiling woman walking across the road and share some of her joy. #life is all about perspectives and looking at different points of view. But that doesn't mean that you have to focus on the bad parts of it. When you're a child, you don't know all about the world and the crimes and the deaths. As you grow, you start to learn. But while you're learning about the other side of things, the bad side, you can't lose hope that the good side is bigger and a better place to be. Happiness is something a lot of people struggle with, and I don't think that others realize that smiles are easy to fake. Everyone has bad days. And I used to think that I almost didn't have the right to have bad days, because it's not like anything in my #life is wrong. But telling someone not to be sad because others have it so much worse is like telling someone not to be happy because others have it so much better. You can't control how you feel; otherwise, why would you not just be happy all the time? Don't let others tell you that you should be happier. One of the worst feelings in the world is having to have to pretend to be happy when all you want to do is be alone. Ed Sheeran once said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone." If you try to live according to other people's version of who you should be, you can and probably lose sight of who you are and what makes you happy. What causes you genuine happiness? It's cheesy, but it's something that I take with serious consideration. Happiness is not something to take for granted, because it can be taken away so easily. Take the time to figure out what makes you happy, truly happy, even if it seems like a little thing, like dancing around your room or licking cookie dough off the beaters. You may think that, because they're so little, they don't have an impact on your mood. But the little things are what makes your #life worth living. Take time out of your day to do things that make you pleased, even if they're small and you don't think they're that important. But if they make you happy, isn't that all that matters? Some of the things that never fail to put a smile on my face are: hot chocolate, the smell of fresh bread, watching live theatre, meeting new people, books you can't put down, wake boarding, seeing my cousins and watching old Disney movies. But I think the biggest thing that makes me happy is making other people also feel happiness; if knowing that you helped someone, maybe even saved them, isn't one of the best feelings in the world, I don't know what is. So, to answer my beginning question, what is happiness? Happiness is a lot of things, to a lot of different people. Things change all the time. People change, perspectives change, feelings change, and your emotions change. But one thing that should never change is always trying to be happy. Decide what makes you happy, and go for it. I know what happiness is to me; now it's up to you to decide what happiness means to you. #happiness #is #a #choice #happy #sad