Happiness is an illusion - and you’re not who you think you are!
Are you completely happy?
Over the last few years there has been an increasing focus on ‘happiness’. The media, psychologists, academics and various pundits have all explored ‘what’ makes us happy. Countless people I meet feel that they should be happy. Perhaps you are one of them; waiting to find happiness at some point in the future when you arrive at the right job, relationship, life balance, income level… or whatever.
The ’sad’ truth is that happiness has a direct relationship to sadness. They are mutually dependent. You cannot have one without the other. Just like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and all the rest … We live in a dualistic world of these opposites. But all opposites are relative. They are related because they spring from one.
In order to ‘arrive ‘ at contentment one must accept and embrace this. You cannot have sunshine without rain. The embracing of these facts of life could be called wisdom.
This wisdom of course brings into question the very premise of everything we do. Because everything we do is based on goals, aspirations, improvement, enhancement. The idea that you are flawed now but can be perfect later. Meanwhile the magic of life passes you by.
Stop. The invitation of life, as I put it, is to ‘become who you are’. This is a paradox because you already ‘are’ and you are lost in this idea of ‘becoming’. In other words the invitation is to look before, beyond and between all the notions you have been fed and gathered and to realise that these are just clothes that you wear. At best they are aspects of who you are.
So if you are ‘unhappy’ with who you are it is no surprise because you are not what you think you are. You are what resides beneath.
Rasheed is the author of The Gift of Inner Success
