Happiness is a bucket of baby sloths. The End.

What kind of human isn't happy when seeing a bucket of stuffed animals and baby sloths!?

While this makes me squeeeeeeee! with delight I am only temporarily happy from this image, so I move on to pictures of baby hippos, followed by other cute cuddly baby animal photos which the internet has endless amounts of. When suddenly I realize I've spent half my morning browsing baby animal images and have to get ready for my day and leave for work in 5 minutes or less.

Why do I do this to myself!? Am I so unhappy with everything else I must spend hours distracting myself with cute animal pictures to feel happy? This isn't right. Maybe I just don't want to go to work... yeah. I work every day of the week these days so I think I just don't want to go to work.

But this raises a question in my mind.... What is happiness? What makes you happy? Is it all in your head?

What I mean to say is sure, as the saying goes "money can't buy you happiness" but it sure can buy you things which make you happy for some time. But that's the catch you see, that excitement of that new thing only lasts for so long and after it fades you seek something new to excite you. Depending on the person this state of happiness could last hours, day or months. But what truly makes you happy?

Puppies make me happy. Ok, any baby animal really... I enjoy good food. I enjoy walking my dog on crisp sunny mornings. I enjoy the sound of bugs and birds chattering at the break of dawn. I enjoy warm blankets and cool fresh air. I enjoy a hot cup of tea on a cold day and ginger sun tea in the summer. I enjoy lavender Epsom salt baths. I enjoy cooking and sharing meals with those I love.

(No I'm not writing a personal ad looking for love on the internet, I'm just listing a few examples of the simple things in life that make me happy.. but seriously, who doesn't like long walks on the beach!?)

These are things that make me happy. They aren't objects, though obviously I too enjoy or am made happy by objects. I like buying new shoes, or silly trinkets and toys but they don't make me feel like my life is better. They don't make me happy in the long run. Doing the things that make me happy help me feel happy about my life but sometimes I can't do those things - or so I think.

It comes down to a state of mind. While I love a good morning walk with my dog when the weathers nice I start to dread it as it gets cold and rainy out. I rush the walks, I grumble about going and I make them short and am irritated by the whole event. This makes me irritable about any other small tasks which I might have to accomplish before going back out in the cold to get to work. This is setting myself up for a grumpy bad day. I have decided to be unhappy and usually have a hard time pulling myself out of this spiral.

It's hard to not get caught in this spiral. It's like a slippery slope which I often see happening and know I'm in and want out of but can't get myself out of. In those cases I get more upset because I'm upset for nothing at all. This makes me more upset and suddenly I'm irritable and grumpy for literally no good reason.

I usually try and counter my upset with something that makes me happy.... it's like a mental distraction. I buy myself a chai or get some kind of treat. I'm not rewarding the bad mood so much as trying to change my focus thus allowing me to steer myself in a better direction.

I see many people trying to do this yet failing miserably. Their life is a mess, they are unhappy and they buy things to feel better in small doses. This is so they can feel better in bursts rather then face the difficulties in their lives. People misplace their causes for being unhappy - or just try to fill their lives with other things to make them happy.







The root of your happiness is at the center of your life. It's self confidence, it's who you keep in your life, how you take care of you, what you do for you, what you do for others. For me, a huge part of my life is my dog. She means the world to me. Even as I grumble and gripe while walking her in the rain, I go out in that weather because I love her. Because I care so much about her I will drag my sorry self out of the house to take care of her. The love I feel for her, even when annoyed with her because she wont stop sniffing plants and is making me stand in the cold even longer, is so strong that really I am happy to do these things.

(This picture was taken 4 or 5 years ago, but it's decmber and so I decided this is an appropriate photo to post of her)

I complain a lot, A LOT, but when I look at my life I am filled with happiness. I have so very much to be happy for, even when things get rough. It's easy to loose sight of the wonderful things in life, all you have to be happy about, all the greatness you have and can achieve but never forget that for too long.

I have spent far too much time in negative, mentally damaging environment - it has made being happy a very difficult thing for me. It's something I have to work on because I've spent a lot of time being miserable and unhappy. It's easier to be upset, so now I have to remind myself, I have to challenge myself to be happy. I can't help who I was raised by, how my family has affected me (in this case I do mean the negative ways, though there are plenty of positive ones too) but I can help how I choose to lead my life. 

I may not have the money to go out and eat the food I want, I can't change the weather, I can't have the things that I enjoy everyday but the fact that I can have them at all is something to appreciate. I am happy to be alive and grateful to have those that I have in my life. I feel stronger knowing that by casting out those that hurt me and cause me to doubt myself makes me stronger and happier. I am what makes me happy. By stopping and appreciating the little things everyday I am able to be a happier person all the time. I will still complain, I will grumble and I will always be a worrier, but make no mistake that when it comes down to it, when I take a look at my life, no matter how chaotic it may be, I am happier now then I have ever been.


(That last picture is from a great/hilarious online comic called Hyperbole and a Half and this pretty great explanation of the hate spiral in an artistic, hilarious way)

What is "Love" Anyways?

After reading an article entitled "I didn't love my wife when we got married"  I have to admit I felt like I had a few things to say.
I see where he's coming from. I see that he went fast and was really just excited about the relationship and that it wasn't until he really had to work on the relationship that he really found what LOVE is. He just happens to be lucky that he found a woman who saw that he was malleable and that she was patient.

In all honesty it takes a lot of work to keep a happy healthy relationship. And you can say you have been in love a million times in a million ways but when it really comes down to loving, truly loving them, it's different then just saying the words. 
I may not be married. I may not have had that many years on this planet. I may not have had as much time to figure shit out as others - but what I do have is my own life and experiences which have been many in my short amount of years. I have always had wisdom beyond my years and while that has helped me along it has also hindered me. Even the best gifts go wasted sometimes.  

What I have to say on the topic of love, after reading this particular article is this:


People often take poor care of themselves - we are our own worst critics, we beat ourselves up about mistakes, we often take our own achievements for granted - the trouble is when we see our partners as extensions of ourselves we start to treat them like we treat ourselves. Poorly. 
 
We are often blind sighted to the needs of one another and soon there is a revolving door of negativity. This doesn't need to be so. When you acknowledge your actions and how they affect those around you, when you value yourself more, you can value you others more. You can share love rather then bitterness, you can reshape your life through kindness and caring. Through the simple act of loving. 
Loving, in a relationship, is more then just an emotion. It is taking action to show that you care. It is what you do for that person and what you do for yourself. Love isn't a dozen roses. Love isn't expensive dinner. Love isn't between the sheets. 
 
Love is imperfects, idiosyncrasies, and takes effort. Love is doing whats best for both of you rather then what you want to do. Love is taking out the trash without being asked and not expecting anything in return. Love is realizing how the other person feels and doing what you can for them. Love is more then just being happy all the time. Love is unconditional and rewarding in and of it's self. 

I think it takes time and mistakes to learn what life's about. Love is no different. I used to think that love was a struggle. That you had to make mistakes and tough it out and deal with it, learn from it.
I thought I had to deal with so much struggling because love was worth it in the end. I thought if I just kept with it. If I just tried harder..... But really that just kept me in a miserable place.

What I didn't realize is that while love takes effort it shouldn't be draining. Love isn't thinking so much of the other person before yourself that you are self sacrificing to the point of exhaustion. Lessons learned - Love takes balance. Because love between two people needs to be a shared effort. If you are helping them out they should be helping you out. 
Love can be a one way street but ideally it's a shared path. One that might have been lightly walked before but has become a different landscape due to new plant growth, maybe it's and full of weeds and thorns, maybe there are fields of daisies. You don't know until you walk down that path.

We try to tread a new path but often find ourselves in the same places we've been - and if we're smart we learned from before and we make different choices this time around. While not dwelling on the past we use it as a dim light to guide us.
We can hold hands through the thickets so if we stumble someone's there to help us back up again. Someone who loves us, who won't belittle us for falling, who won't judge us for crying, who won't think twice about bandaging our wounds, who won't let go of our hand and run, even when they are scared. 

Love is understanding how the other person feels and respecting that they feel that way - even if it seems unfounded. That is putting them before yourself - it's not cleaning up after them and being resentful about it.


At this point I have exhausted the topic for myself so I shall end with no real well rounded statement of conclusion. After all we can never know where one story ends and another begins.