I don’t know if I truly recognized the beauty of the earth and our surroundings until I moved to the top of a hill. Something up here is so fresh—it must be the air, we must get it first since we are higher. Haha. I mostly recognize this on one particular walk we take in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods I’ve ever seen. The greenery is plush, the homes are beautifully landscaped and the lake is visible from certain areas. It’s breathtaking—(in more than one way…like I said, it’s a hill. There is uphill climbing involved).
It was on a particular walk one evening when I realized just how happy I am with my life. I looked at my husband and child, I looked at our beautiful earth, I thought about all of the circumstances of our lives and families and felt so incredibly blessed. I turned to my husband and I just said, “I am so happy with our life.” He concurred on this thought of mine and I started thinking about our lives together over the past five years and all of our different circumstances.
We started out in an apartment, went to living with parents, to a small home, to a larger home. We went from me having a corporate job, to working in the family business, to me not working at all. We went from Marc having a hard labor position, to no job, to coaching football, to part time, to full time student, to part time worker/part time student…to full time provider working 50+ hour weeks. We’ve gone from junker cars to nicer cars. From money , to no money, to some money, to money and so on. We’ve become parents, lost a beloved pet, been through a miscarriage and had countless other circumstances that have made our life interesting and exciting.
And as I thought about all of these things, I do remember times of sadness…times where we weren’t sure how we’d make it through a particular trial in life, but ultimately what I remember is just being happy. Continuing on our walk, on this beautiful evening, it dawned on me that the key to being happy isn’t your surroundings, your things, your circumstances, but it’s CHOOSING to be happy with whatever it is you’ve got. My husband and I discussed this and did agree that being happy with your current situation, does not mean that you have to settle as though you’ve reached a final checkpoint. One of the things that we share in common is that we both constantly look toward the future with hope and collectively work hard towards our goals. BUT, we have refused to live our lives saying, “Well, when ‘THIS’ happens, we can be happy.” I’ve noticed that when that is said, usually, God wants you to learn to live happily without it, before He will bless you with it.
If we are constantly looking around at what we don’t have instead of seeing the blessings of what we do, what makes us think that God is going to give us more to just turn our noses up at and neglect?
I’m so grateful for the happy life I lead. There are definite trials that we face on a day to day basis, but I see so much goodness that I am blessed with that outweighs any bump in the road.
Happiness is not an emotion, it’s a choice. I looked up the definition of happiness- it’s stated as “a state of well-being and contentment” . I started thinking about the word “contentment” and so I looked up the definition of content—“feeling or showing satisfaction with one's possessions, status, or situation.” I think this further concludes that happiness is a choice.
And this is something that God wants us to feel-- "Men are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:15, 25).
Make the choice to be happy today. You deserve to have joy in your life.
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It's so interesting that you wrote about this specific topic today. My dad and I were just talking about this exact thing yesterday. I was telling him how I couldn't wait to be done with certain things that are happening right now (ex. school) and he was talking about how no matter what situation we are in we can find happiness. I consider myself to be a pretty happy person but find myself sometimes wishing that certain stages would move along faster then others and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that we choose our happiness. I see people all of the time that are in less then desireable circumstances and they choose to be happy. I think so many times we count the blessings we don't have instead of counting the ones that we do. I love that you wrote about this today...thank you.
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