Everyone wants to be happy. If you asked everybody in the world what the purpose of life is, I'm sure the answer 'to be happy' would be near the top of the list. Everyone has different idea of what that looks like, even people in similar situations. If you compared what happiness looks like now to what it looked like a thousand years ago it would be tough to even say the two are the same thing even at the very root.
Think about this for a second. Say you were the only person on earth. You never knew another human, you never even knew that another human could exist. How would you get happiness? You might say that it would be really tough to do because you'd be incredibly lonely - but that's not true. You can't be lonely if that's the only state you've ever been in. Without ever experiencing or seeing feelings of companionship and human intimacy, it would be impossible to miss those things. So how would you find happiness? I think you could do it, but it would certainly look a lot different.
What does happiness look to you right now? Stop for a second and think about it. Is it falling in love and raising a family? Is it having your dream job and being excited to wake up every morning? Is it making a ton of money so you can live how you want and travel where you want? Is it finding a bigger purpose in life, something supernatural, living for something bigger than yourself, even something you've haven't necessarily seen or fully experienced yet?
For me, there's no job or any amount of money or any girl that could ever bring me full happiness. I believe full happiness lies in my faith in God and where that will take me, but let's not get off track.
Now what if the thing that you believe brings happiness never existed? Could you find some other way to be happy? If dream jobs didn't exist, if everyone simply did the same job 40 hours a week, could you find happiness somewhere else? Of course you could. The human mind is built to adapt and adjust. You weren't predestined to find happiness in one specific thing, you find happiness in whatever your thoughts and circumstances put in front of you (or you take the extra step and put it in front of yourself - for you self-confident optimists out there).
Now let's bring in the experience of seeing other people's happiness into the equation. Our minds adapt and adjust, sure, but they also compare and contrast. You see your friends happiness, or worse, some celebrities 'happiness', and your brain goes to work. Your brain starts comparing their happiness with your own happiness. Suddenly happiness isn't such a personal thing is it? You were perfectly happy with the job you had and the money you made and the relationships you were in until you saw what another person had and started wondering if it was better than what you had. All of the sudden your happiness is gone, for no other reason but you saw another person appearing happy and lost your own mindset and contentment. If true happiness is happiness that appears better than everyone else's happiness, there's only going to be one happy person on earth - and who wants to live life like that? Happiness isn't a competition.
Media is one of the main catalysts of everything I just spoke about. You get on Facebook and see what your friends are doing and you start comparing yourself to them. The problem with that is that people don't typically make their low points public. What you're seeing from someone's online postings are the things they want people to see, the things that make people envious of them (that may not be your intention, but ultimately that's what you're doing). There's a quote that says it pretty well:
"The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel"Just because someone has more of something that you want than you do doesn't mean you can't be happy. That's ludicrous. There will always be someone better, there will always be someone that has more than you. If you let that dictate your happiness you'll simply be miserable your entire life.
This post is like most of my posts in that it doesn't have a conclusion. I could sit here like every other inspired young person in the world and write some cliche like 'stop comparing yourself and be happy with who you are - because you're unique and perfect in your own way', but I don't think that would do anybody any good. If you struggle with happiness because you're stuck in comparison mode, that sucks and you might not ever get out of that, and that's a hard reality. But at least try to get out of it. Believe in God? Ask Him for help. Have family and friends? Talk to them about it. Stop putting everything on yourself, narrow your focus, and start becoming happier.
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