“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
–Anonymous
Happy people don’t have perfect lives. They have problems just like everyone else. What distinguishes happy people from unhappy people is their attitude. Happy people have made up their minds that they can look beyond their problems and be happy in spite of them. Instead of saying, “I will be happy when certain circumstances exist,” happy people vow to be as happy as possible regardless of the circumstances.
Life can be like a long roller coaster ride. It is hard to be happy during the down phases, but we should try to be happy during the up phases. We can make up our minds that we will be happy only if certain things happen, or we can resolve to be happy as much of the time as possible. This sounds like a great over-simplification of what is required for happiness, but I believe that our attitude toward life plays a bigger role in our happiness than the circumstances of life, except for those times when we have just suffered a great personal loss. I don’t believe that it is either possible, or appropriate, to be happy when we have just lost a loved one. At such times, we need to go through a period of grief as part of the healing process. However, except for times of great personal loss, I believe that most of us can be happy much of the time if we change our attitudes.
I think we all need to count our blessings, and we all have a lot of them to count, whether or not we think so. Just having the privilege to live in America gives us an enormous advantage over most of the world’s population. As we watch TV news coverage of the lives of ordinary people in war-torn countries with repressive regimes, we should say to ourselves, “There, but for the grace of God, I could be.” If we have reasonably good health, and are free from pain, we are the envy of many who suffer every day of their lives. If we have someone to love, who loves us back, we have something that so many people are in search of. Unfortunately, millions of Americans, who have all the blessings I just mentioned above, think they need still more to be happy.
Fame and fortune are the things that so many people yearn for, and so few ever attain. I think that fame and fortune are only the frosting on the sweet cake of life. They would be nice to have, but we certainly don’t have to have them in order to enjoy the cake. The point is that large numbers of people are extremely happy without either fame or fortune, and you can be, too. Unless you are the victim of one or more catastrophic personal losses, you should be able to be happy today. If you are not happy, you must face the likelihood that you will never be happy without a change in your attitude toward life. Unlike physical organs, there is no waiting list for attitude transplants. Each individual has the capability of changing his or her attitude about life, but our capacity to change the circumstances of life is far more limited. In the words of that great thinker Abraham Lincoln, “I think most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
