March 19th, 2025
"I've seen cries of despair in the literature of every culture. But even on the internet, it’s rare to come across something like this: “I’m glad to be exactly where I am. I walked past places where I once felt happy, and just remembering that joy made me feel good. I’m grateful to have no real problems, to be surrounded by people I love, to enjoy the money that somehow fell into my lap. Even the water in my glass tastes amazing."
At some point, I figured out how to enjoy life, and the world opened up for me. I realized that I have a natural ability to slip into euphoria, that I am, at my core, an ideologically happy person. There’s so much in this world that I genuinely love, and I know how to pass that inner excitement on to others.
It's very easy to be depressed. It's very easy to sink into a cycle where you keep feeding your own melancholy, digging deeper and deeper until you start to almost enjoy it. For an adult, staying enchanted with life every day takes serious work.
If you are hit with a tragedy, dwelling on it and savoring those emotions won't help. The only thing you can do to get through the hard times with as little additional damage as possible is to focus on the sources of happiness you still have. Force yourself to maintain your passions, even artificially, and keep your hands busy with them for the sake of the work itself.
I know it sounds cliché, but happiness isn't about the events that happen to you — it's the product of your mindset and your conscious decisions to find beauty in the mundane and choose activities that bring you fulfillment. Happiness isn't something that randomly happens when the conditions are finally right — it's something that you actively cultivate.