“Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness” 

I hope most have noticed that this is the tagline of this blog. But sometimes it seems like I’ve been so busy chasing the funds to have the former that there’s rarely any time left over to engage in the latter.

And I know I’m not the only one.

We spend so much time getting ready to be happy and not enough actually being happy.

The poor are so busy trying to get money to be rich, because then they will be happy. The working poor, formerly known as the middle class, are so busy trying to keep what money they have while also seeking more to be happy. The rich are so busy trying to prove themselves worthy of having said money to be happy.

Yet how many of them truly are?

Someone once asked the Dalai Lama, what surprised him most about humanity, he answered:

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The Dalai Lama is very astute in his statement. In the bombardment of information, society, culture and idealism, I sometimes feel we’re slowly become something so homogeneous by silent consensus that we tend to lose that spirit which makes the individual so special. We mute the individual spirit that dares to pursue anything than what the masses have decreed should make us happy, when the masses themselves continually change the definitions.

Another favorite quote of mine: All are born originals: most die as copies.

Too many of us see ourselves through the eyes of others. And those eyes are most likely only viewing what they have been told to look at. When everyone is looking at the same things, is anyone really seeing anything?

Years ago, Android had a series of commercials with the closing tagline: be together, not the same. I think that also works in finding your own sustained happiness.

Life can be this amazing place full of light, happiness and serenity. Or it can be a dark place, full of drama and fear. It’s life, it holds all of these possibilities, but it’s up to you to choose what’s possible for yourself. And you must choose this for yourself everyday, sometimes several times a day.

When it comes down to the basics, we all want a happy future, but life can be a beautiful thing right here, right now, in the present; we just have to take a moment to keep reminding ourselves.

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It’s Tuesday, let’s see how others are slicing it it, this Day 2 of the challenge:

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Day 2 – Two Writing Teachers