Perhaps the most important thing I’ve ever learned is that happiness is a choice.

A long time ago when I was barely twenty my boyfriends’ parents asked me the dreaded question, what do you want to be when you grow up. This is a question I’d been asked since I was seven by well-meaning adults thinking they were helping me put my life together. In actuality it’s just the opposite. How can anyone nail down a life-defining question like that at such a young age? It feels like a question only an adult with little creative adventure running through their bones could ask a child. At seven no one knows the answer to that question, except maybe a prodigy. And I’m not completely convinced there either. Just because you excel at something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s your passion.

Part of the reason I cringed at this question is because I’d never known the answer to it. When I was little I made up answers, like gardener, movie-star, or singer. But by twentyish I knew the secret, I just didn’t know all the details. That’s when my answer became, I want to be happy. Thinking back this was a pretty sage answer, but it elicited smirks and chagrins from concerned adults who thought they had life figured out. This was not the answer they were looking for, they were looking for practicality and a road map. In all honesty, I still do not possess much of either of those qualities.

But I did know enough then to realize that it wasn’t about external things. My life path wouldn’t necessarily make me happy, authentic happiness had to come from inside. What I had surmised at that tender age was that my internal stance would be the key. As long as there was happiness, joy, and awe within I would find the same on the outside no matter what I was doing. Happiness is not so much about what we do but the authentic choices we make that align us with our soul sense, and the regular re-dedication to continually choose happiness no matter what else may be going on. It may not always be easy, but still it is a choice.

Being happy is what makes the rest of our lives fall into place. But as you can imagine happiness is easily trampled upon when we get caught up in what we think we ought to be doing, or when we look to what others have and do rather than inside our own hearts and honest desires. And certainly this time of global fear and panic doesn’t make happiness any easier. Yet it is always a choice. If we can find that happiness within, whether it’s dog-walking, parachuting, or writing, we will find it out there in the rest of our lives. So follow your heart and the voice that whispers what it is that makes you feel whole.

Trust me you’ll be happy you did.

kb