Happiness is a state of being

Recently, I found myself thinking about how happy I feel these days, and seemingly out of nowhere, I remembered a man I met decades ago.

When I was in college, I volunteered at a food pantry for a semester. Once a week, I helped prepare and serve dinner to people experiencing homelessness. There was one homeless man I looked forward to seeing—everyone did, now that I think about it. When he walked into the building, he lit up the room with his happiness. He smiled. He laughed. He seemed genuinely happy.

And I remember wondering: How can someone who has so little be so happy? It wasn't a fleeting thought, either. The question stayed with me for weeks. I simply couldn't wrap my head around it.

And just recently, when I thought about how I was feeling, it hit me that he showed me happiness could exist even when the circumstances of someone's life were far from what I considered ideal.

He showed me that happiness isn't something we achieve. It is a state of being. And yet, despite witnessing that lesson firsthand, I spent the next several decades trying to achieve happiness.

I pursued goals. I worked hard. I measured progress. I celebrated accomplishments.

And then I moved on to the next thing. There was always another milestone. Another opportunity. Another version of success waiting somewhere in the future.

Was I happy in that pursuit? I wouldn't say I was unhappy. Incomplete may be a better word to describe the feeling. And at times, I felt a little numb, too.

When I look back now, I see how my pursuit of achievement was shaped by the world around me. From an early age, I was encouraged to achieve. Go to school. Go to college. Build a career. Earn a promotion. Make more money. Buy the car. Go on the trip.

Accumulate more. Accomplish more. More. More. More.

And while there's nothing inherently wrong with achieving any of those things, I now understand that accomplishment alone doesn't create happiness. Because if it did, that's what I would've felt.

I can see now that I was taught how to set goals. How to work hard. How to succeed. But I was never taught how to look in the mirror and love, accept, and be grateful for everything I saw. Why isn't this something we teach our kids?

I didn't know how to recognize that I was already enough without having to achieve one more thing.

It wasn't until I began this living inquiry into what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning that I started holding up a mirror, being honest with myself (as painful as it is), and loving what I saw. That's REALLY hard to do, which is why I believe we skip over that life lesson and instead focus on achievement. Because focusing on achievement is easier than self-acceptance.

But looking inward with greater honesty and love is what has given me this feeling of happiness, love, acceptance, and completeness. A sense of being alive. And increasingly, I'm discovering that some of my greatest moments of happiness have little to do with what I've achieved and instead come from...

Being present with my thoughts and feelings.

Hugging trees and walking barefoot on the grass.

Working out with my husband, Lincoln.

Pondering purpose with my soul sister, Amy

Learning new crafts with my girlfriends, The WitchCrafters.

Having responsibilities at work and at home.

Appreciating what I already have instead of focusing on what I still want.

Happiness isn't something waiting out there for us to find. It's something we experience when we change how we relate to the life we already have. Happiness is a state of being. A mindset. A way of approaching life that can be cultivated through self-awareness, acceptance, gratitude, and connection.

This doesn't mean I'm happy all the time.

I still experience disappointment. Frustration. Sadness. Fear. All the emotions that come with being human. Happiness doesn't require those emotions to disappear. Nor does it mean that our circumstances don't matter.

It just means I don't have to make my happiness conditional on everything going the way I want it to. There's a tremendous amount of freedom in that realization.

I still have goals.

I still have ambition.

I still want to grow and make a difference.

But I don't have to achieve more to be worthy of happiness. I can now look in the mirror with greater love, acceptance, and gratitude for the person looking back at me. Not because of what she's accomplished, but because of who she is.

Which brings me back to that man at the food pantry. I hadn't thought about him in decades. But as I reflected on what I'm learning about happiness, there he was in my memory. Someone who seemingly had so little appeared to have so much. And now, I have that, too.

It makes me wonder what other life lessons I've missed all these years by looking for more.

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Listen to this song to connect with this journal entry: I Am by Satsang