What If Happiness Is Right Here, Right Now?

What If Happiness Is Right Here, Right Now?
By Katie Rochelle, July 31st 2017

We keep telling ourselves we’ll be happy when we get that job, or buy that car, get a house, fall in love. We keep telling ourselves it’ll get better one day, someday. When all these other things happen, when we get all the things we think we need in order to be happy.

Why can’t we just be happy from right here? Why can’t we just be happy with where we are? With what we’re doing?

Why doesn’t here and right now ever feel like enough? Why must we continue to reach for more? Endlessly searching for what comes next when we don’t even know what it is or where it will be.

What are we lacking? What empty hole are we trying to fill? Will we ever truly fill it? Will we ever be content and happy if we keep chasing the fleeting moments?

The amount of pressure we place on ourselves to be perfect and to get it together is substantial. We will never achieve the standards we so highly set for ourselves because we’ll still be wishing for more, for better.

What if I told you that happy is right here and right now? That you’re already among your somedays and your best days. What if I told you to stop wishing away your moments for better ones, for more together ones? What if I told you to stop looking for answers, to stop focusing on getting there and to start enjoying here?
Because my dear, here won’t last forever. In reality, today is all we have. For all we know, it’s all we been given. We’ve been given the allotted time of today. Do you really want to waste it anticipating your tomorrows? Do you really want to spend your todays waiting?

I know what it feels like to be in that boat. Feeling like you should be somewhere else, but you don’t know where that is. Feeling like your happiness is attached to things, places, and people. Thinking that you need more than this. Feeling that you’re not doing what you should be doing. That you’re behind in life, that you didn’t get the memo, or catch the right train.

I get it. I’ve been there.

But, I need you, me, us, to change our perspective. To change our heart, to give ourselves a break. To admit that yes, we are trying, that we may be struggling, but by the grace of God, we are trying.

Can’t that be enough? Shouldn’t that be enough? Don’t you think you should make right here, right now, enough?

We may not have it all figured out. We may not have that job yet, we probably can’t afford that new card, or house or handle another heartbreak. But I’m here to say there is so much more to life than those things.

And when you finally get all those things, you’ll be filled with gratitude for them, because you’ll remember the fight you fought to get there.

I hope you count the things in your life that you have, because I have a feeling they’re more than the things you don’t.