You are probably thinking, what? I am not scared of being happy. My questions back to you would be:
Are you happy right now?
Are you happy with you job or career?
Are you happy with your current money situation?
Are you happy in your relationships?
Are you happy with your sex life?
Are you happy with where you are in reaching your goals?
If you can answer yes to all of these (and any others), GREAT! You have remembered happiness is your unalienable right and you have stopped pursuing it. Keep it up!
If you answered no to even one of these questions, ask yourself some more questions. Think. Why are you choosing to not be happy? Happiness doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, married or single, checking things off you to-do list or watching the clouds float by or…. Happiness is just feeling contentment with whatever situation you are experiencing. So why do we choose not to be happy? Why does even toying with the idea of being happy most (if not all) of the time cause fear in us?
It’s what we have been taught.
Subtle as it might be, we have been taught to never have or be happiness, but to be in pursuit of it. Remember that part in the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Life and Liberty are given as being (no condition), but we are specifically told that we are to be in pursuit of Happiness. The first definition of pursuit is the action of following someone or something, striving toward. Why not simply state Life, Liberty and Happiness? I wonder what Thomas Jefferson was thinking? Did he mean that we must always be in the act of striving for happiness? I believe this is what most people have adopted into their belief system. If not, we would simply be happy.
Since words are such a poor way of communicating, I ask what might he have been feeling? I think it is simply that we have the right to choose the happiness of our pursuit (an activity of a specific kind). Even if this is not “right,” it certainly feels a lot better than always striving for happiness. Go with what feels right. Remember words are simply a tool of communication. They are subjective, they don’t belong to the object of thought. You have the power to change your thoughts. You have a choice to go with what feels better for you.
