I’m blessed to join this lovely tribe of writers for Five Minute Friday. Just what it sounds like. Five minutes, one writing prompt, zero editing. Just write. Now GO!
I heard the prompt of “happy” and felt anxious.
What the? Who does that?
Not deep down true anxiety but pressure. And then the questions came. Am I happy? I can make a list of people and things that “make” me happy. I think most of us know that we can choose to be happy. Because conversely sometimes I can just tell when a few things begin to slide in my day, all I think about is pulling on my crabby pants and just being ornery. So I know that the opposite is true.
But actual happiness? Again the pressure. But not from myself… from the norms and expectations that are just sort of “out there” about what it means to be happy. Married. (nope) A mother. (nope) Lots of friends who gather together at long tables and eat fabulous farm-to-table organic meals. (nope but that part sounds kinda fun… I’ll bring the wine, c’mon over.)
I think 
I’m happiest when I choose to be my own kind of happy, not what others are experiencing as happy or what I once thought I needed to be happy. Once I start down that road, it’s got potholes of envy and detours of comparison that will lead me nowhere good.
I vow to compare my happiness with no one else’s, but to pray that God continues to guide me in his ways, which lead to an inner happiness and peace that cannot be compared.
.
Patricia Alderman 
That song instantly came to mind for me too!!! Comparison is definitely the thief of happiness in my life. Visiting from fmf.
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THIS: “I think I’m happiest when I choose to be my own kind of happy, not what others are experiencing as happy or what I once thought I needed to be happy.” Welcome to FMF. As a single woman, with no children, I identified with thus post. I’m in the 5 spot this week.
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I love your post today. And that picture of the dandelion. I wanted to copy that but it wouldn’t let me. Will you send that to me
Perri
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Ironically my daughter and I were just saying this morning that we can’t listen to “Happy” by Pharrell without being happy. I agree with you that happiness cannot be evoked by the things that the world deems happiness. I used to dream of a family with a handsome husband, four children and a split level house. None of which I have today. I’ve found that happiness has it’s ebbs and flows. I do however have joy. The world can’t take that away.
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I’m terminally ill, my career is gone, and am no longer well enough to leave the property (even for a farm-to-table meal), but I am nonetheless happy.
It’s like that scene in ‘The Last Samurai’, when the Samurai leader Katsumoto says, “But then I come to this place of my ancestors, and I realize that like these blossoms, we are all dying.”
Life and death and all eternity are contained in every moment, with no need for comparisons with the past of aspirations for the future. Happy is simply and totally Now.
#1 at FMF this week.
https://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2016/08/your-dying-spouse-190-mustard-seed-of.html
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That song was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the prompt. I agree, we need to find our own kind of happy, not pursue someone else’s idea of it or what we feel “should” make us feel happy. I found Jennifer Dukes Lee’s Happiness Style Assessment really helpful for understanding that and realising that it’s ok to find happiness in different things from other people. Visiting from FMF #20.
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