LIFE AND HAPPINESS
By
Mary Reasonover
Happiness is “like you,” whatever your circumstances. Circumstances can be changed or accepted, with accordance to what they are.
To like you, is to truly love you, and to love you, is to love God. Humans share life and love together; we share our soul with God…for God only sees the heart and soul. The soul is the center and creator of happiness…
I wrote these words when someone asked my thoughts on happiness; how or where do we find happiness? I have given it much thought, as to my own happiness.
The dictionary definition is pleasure, contentment, or joy. It also includes, “under causing pleasure,” “a happy childhood,” which was already in my thoughts. We all have the “child within.”
My childhood consisted of more frightening and insecure memories, than happy or joyful memories. Whatever my circumstances became when I reached “so called” adulthood, looking back at the past, many years, people have always told me, you are a very strong person. I believe my insecurities as a child gave me an attitude, “everything will be alright.” This attitude has carried me through four near death experiences, a failed marriage, three children, and a genetic and crippling disease, a lifelong battle. It has left me with many memories in my mind today, shelved like a library of records.
Is happiness really the memories we choose to reread in our mind…our thoughts? Is happiness the attitude we developed as we grew from a child to an adult? Is it having a positive attitude versus a negative attitude, regardless of our own circumstances, or the circumstances with the world?
If we speak of love or joy, we find heartfelt memories, and gratitude, if we speak of evil, we find memories of fear, if we speak of sadness, we find heartfelt memories of sadness for ourselves, and those around us, who are suffering from circumstances in their life. Is gratitude the ultimate, or concluding source of happiness?
Life has many paths, many of love and joy, many of sorrow and suffering, more for some, less for others. The paths of life; the fate that may finds us, or the lessons we needed to learn, the joys and love we have shared, perhaps, they are the gratitude we need to have?
“Life is a gift from God, what we do with our life is our gift to God,” has been my philosophy almost my entire adult life.
We will err, because we are human, which only requires forgiveness of self and others. To err is to make the journey. Will we find absolution with life in forgiveness? Will we find love, compassion and kindness with gratitude?
If we meet these expectations and acceptance of self, the “I” that we are, will we find the “Like” of self that creates the “Love” of self we need, and the love we want to share, while on this brief journey we call by name, “Life,” and find the inner happiness we seek, the center of our being, where soul and God reside, as One.
To love “you,” is to love God…Happiness, perhaps Peace, our “freedom” that exist within. The secret that often takes a lifetime to find!
– MLR –