Happiness

About a week or so ago I started writing a blog about happiness. It was elaborate and explanative, filled with glorious details but then I realized something: you can’t explain happiness.

Happiness is fleeting. It occurs in a flash and fills you with warmth. It’s a feeling you can’t describe but want to describe so bad. It’s that moment when you realized you just let out a little sigh and the world felt alright again.

Sometimes happiness can feel so hard to attain, and sometimes happiness can be ignored.

But there is happiness out there for each and every one of us and I truly believe that. And the first step is to embrace it.

Over the past few years I have surrounded myself with a group of fabulous men and women. But you can’t be fabulous if you don’t love yourself, and sometimes I find my friends (my boo and myself) all struggling with loving ourselves.

If you can’t love you- then who will?

Happiness…I have come to find, really comes from an acceptance of the self. It comes from understanding when to let go, to release and to believe.

Why is the most difficult relationship to have the one with yourself?

So many times I have asked myself: who is Suki? Who are you?

And that is the hardest question of all. I can answer who this friend is, who that friend is, who my fiance is, who my mother is, but ask me about myself and I come to a loss of words.

In the past I have had a complex about this and a complex about that. I was not happy because I was not happy with myself. I looked to fill that void (the void of loving myself) in all the wrong places and I found myself in a place I had never expected to be: a deep, dark place.

But you can crawl out of that deep, dark place and emerge like a butterfly with big, brilliant, new wings. And you can find that happiness again because it lies in your heart, like an untapped oil rig ready to erupt.

So I guess I have come to realize that it’s best to leave happiness undefined. I like to use it as a muse, or ponder on its many different meanings.

I like to think of happiness like a barrage of bubbles floating through the air on a beautiful, summer evening. Something I can look at, and laugh at and get on my tippie toes to try and reach out and touch.

And maybe I will never really know who Suki really is…but I am going to enjoy finding out.

What My Friends Are Saying

I asked my friends what they think of when they think of the word “happiness.” This is what they said:

Francis: “Memories that have come and gone where I felt loving and loved in return.”

Laura: “Kittens snuggling with gorillas.”

Katie: “Bite-sized watermelon and other happy people… Happiness is contagious.”

Rachel: “Finally being at peace with my life choices, and living in the moment…”

Jason: “Swimming.”

Jessica: “Spending time with friends and family. Not stressing or thinking about negative things so being able to focus on the moment. Laughing. Cocktails.”

Happiness Quotes That I Am Loving

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”– Groucho Marx

“‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘what I like best,’ and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called”. ~A.A. Milne

“Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day. Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.” – Emily Dickinson

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.” – William Shakespeare

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“I’ve learned to take time for myself and to treat myself with a great deal of love and respect ’cause I like me…. I think I’m kind of cool.” Whoopi Goldberg