My thoughs after a discussion with a friend who answered my question, “Are you happy?”

Happiness comes from a place that isn’t so much defined by external factors as it is a certain knowing, from beneath the place that feels the fear, the sadness, the confusion and the indifference and knows that those are merely fleeting emotions. Happiness is the foundation. It is the sturdy base that allows us to trust that who we are is not the emotions that we feel but a magical, spiritual being with the ability to create life as we want it to be. To be happy doesn’t come from the outside. It comes from the inside. It is the balance, the grounding, the knowledge that all that we have is a direct result of the choices that we make, and if there is discontentment or a kink in the flow, we have the power to listen, envision, decode, and create the change from the messages our soul speaks to us. So if we choose to live our lives with the knowledge and acceptance that we are ‘not unhappy’ … what does that mean? Are we cheating ourselves out of the gift of intention and creation of what our soul desires and knows to be true? Are we closing ourselves off, locking ourselves behind closed doors only to sit in the window yearning for what lies outside the transparent pane of choice that we have created? Do we make this choice for ourselves or someone else? If we make it for someone else, is that our fear talking, rationalizing, making a choice to wither and fade? In the way that we then deny our soul the life we know we can have aren’t we doing the same to the soul of the person we fool ourselves into thinking we protect? Aren’t we choosing for them that ‘not unhappy’ existence as well? And aren’t we denying them the freedom to make their own choices based on their soul, their soul’s voice, too? We kid ourselves if we think that choosing to deny the call of the soul will lead us to where we long to go. We fool ourselves if we think that choosing to deny the call of the soul will lead us home.