The Pursuit of Love and Happiness... or Some Semblance of Peace

Unrelated: I don't know what is happening to Steemit posts and comments at the moment; I seem to post something, it's there for a moment, and then it vanishes... and sometimes does not reappear for many minutes or even hours.

Tip: If you're unsure about something you posted, I highly recommend @steemchiller's Steemworld.org app, which seems to keep accurate track of what's actually happening, even if we can't necessarily see it on the main front end.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

I feel pretty sure that most of us just want to be happy.

"Happy" might mean different things to different people, but we want to be happy. Ironically, it is sometimes often these differences in perception that become the actual obstacles to happiness.

The problems arise when we start to make our happiness contingent on the actions and behaviors of other people.

Perhaps it's not surprising: These kinds of "conditional statements" are all over our language and culture. "You MAKE me happy!" we say to someone we're in love with, and whereas that's a beautiful and loving idea, what we really are saying is "I feel happy in your company, when you're near me."

Happiness is, as they say, "an inside job." It wells up from inside ourselves, rather than from an external source.

Semantic hairsplitting?

Not really. When we transfer control over our happiness to someone else, we cease to be accountable for our own happiness... and soon enough we can end up with a "blame game." And we stop merely experiencing happiness and instead try to acquire it; try to force someone else to provide it for us.

Sadly, we are conditioned by much of life and social messages to view everything thing through a "conditional" (no pun intended!) lens of perception.

A friend of mine teaches love and relationship "rescue" workshops, and she often uses popular fairy tales as teaching moments... usually with much surprise arising among workshop attendees.

Consider the fairy tale prince and princess, whom we are taught to admire for their "unconditional love."

But — in actual fact — the prince has to earn the princess' hand by going on a quest, slaying a dragon, building her a castle, finding her lost treasure and all sorts of other things. Truth is, that love is actually highly conditional. If you do these things for me, you have bought my love. Love is reduced to a transaction, rather than a (figurative) case of "eyes met across the room, and they lived happily ever after."

Alas, it tends to be our own fault.

We don't value that which is freely given, we value that which is "hard to get." But that's often a toxic recipe... in love, in families, in work and in the pursuit of happiness, itself.

Of course, there are exceptions! Sadly, those exceptions often end up becoming "the walking wounded" because they live in a society where their openness and kindness are taken advantage of and abused by the majority. Which leaves you with the option of either shutting yourself off and isolating (did that, many years ago!) or growing as cynical as those who would take advantage of you.

Or... you can courageously stay true to your own sense of authenticity, accept the wounds that might come, and direct your efforts at finding your similarly aligned peers in an ocean of sharks.

Whereas there's no guarantee that your quest ends up successfully locating authentic love and happiness, at least you will find some semblance of peace in the knowing that you didn't sink to a lower common denominator.

And that has value... in and of itself.

Thanks for visiting, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? HAve you ever found true happiness? Unconditional love? Or do you not believe such things exist? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.02.26 17:52 PST
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