I really do want to be happy, just as almost anyone else does, I suppose. I think that the major problem with this desire is that I really don't know what it means to be happy. After all, if we ask twenty different people what happiness is, we'd probably get twenty different answers--with lots of overlap, probably, but still twenty different answers. As I read more Zen thought, for example, it seems that the main path to happiness is letting life be as it is, and going with the flow without trying to make it into what I think it should be. On the other hand, Western thought focuses more on achievement and accomplishment and the gathering of abundance as a way to be happy. A person in a rural farming community can find happiness just living on their own farm and taking care of each day's tasks in the best ways they know how. Someone who loves fishing will be out in rivers, while someone else may sit in their home all day long, watching television and claiming to be happy. So what does this all mean to me, as far as my own happiness is concerned? That's the problem, I think--I don't know. I can be content and satisfied and fulfilled, but do those things mean the same as happiness? Perhaps I'm simply thinking too much, as I often do. All I know for sure is that I want to be happy, and my gut tells me that happiness has to do with accepting things as they are and doing my best to find my own place in things as they are, a place where I can give and love and help others as much as possible. Happiness? Perhaps I'll never know.
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