Let’s see…I find myself happy 12.63454% of the time when I wake up, I am happy 21.65435% during the day and 11.98382% at night and this is during the winter only. The figures changes from season to season and tends to increase during the other seasons because there is more light than dark.
How can anyone really determine how often we find ourselves happy? There is an elementary question to address even before we address the question. Question: what is happiness? How would you define it? To me, there are two words with spiritual implications and experiences that I am unable to define. These are enlightenment and happiness. Is happiness the lack of stress in our lives or does stress handled skillfully produce happiness? Is happiness financial freedom or does having enough money simply one less thing to be unhappy about? These type of examples can be endless.
My difficulty with defining happiness is in partly a result that happiness is an external experience. I feel we are not happy or unhappy as we are joyful. Joy is a state of being and spiritually cannot be measured by how often we feel it.
From a Western perspective, joy can be described as a feeling of ecstasy in our experiences. This is not joy , to me, as joy here is still attached to the event of our life.
Joy, perhaps a form of happiness, exists each moment we are privileged to breath. Joy is meeting life as it is that moment. joy is the gratitude for being alive. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck said: ” Joy is what’s happening right now minus our opinion of it”.
A quote states: ” If ignorance is bliss, then why aren’t more people happy”? So called happiness escapes many people because of the ignorance of truly living. How often is time spent regretting or fretting about the past? How much time is spent thinking and worrying about the future? Consider the following statement: Yesterday is gone; tomorrow is unknown; living is now.
When living in the moment, we discover the extraordinary from the ordinary? Suggestions: Take a 15 minute walk and pay attention to what you see. When showering, pay attention to the water from your head to your back to your legs. Or, mindfully eat your food by chewing more slowly and for a longer period.
We have been told to appreciate our blessings in disguise. Joy, a substitute for happiness, is experiencing and appreciating the blessings not in disguise through the ordinary of living the moment!
