Why Be Happy When You Could Be Open?
Feb 10, 2020
This post was originally published on Soulaia.com
Are you one of the 99.9% of people who, when asked âWhat do you want most out of life?â reply with âto be happy... really really really happyâ? If so⊠boy oh boy, are you in the right place and boy oh boy, are you here at the right time.
Because in the next two to five minutes (depending on how slowly or quickly you like to read), Iâll share with you the insights that have given me a deep appreciation and love for happiness as a personal pursuit and that have also simultaneously led me to say âWhy be happy when you could be open?"
Who knows, by the end, you might find yourself loudly professing âScrew being happy!â Or, maybe not. Maybe youâll discover a different truth that feels good for you and your life right now. As with anything I write or say, I ask that you not simply accept my words as truth, but that you try them on and see how they fit (or donât fit) your system of values and personal map of where youâve been, where you are, and where youâre going.
Whatever you are experiencing at this moment is just a chapter, not your whole story.
There is one thing, if understood deeply, that will make your life so much simpler, so much easier, and so much more joyful. It is this:
Life is never the same. It is an ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-evolving series of experiences. What that means is that the experience you are currently in will not last forever. In fact, it will not last nearly as long as you think. Whether youâre flying high (having just received a job promotion, having just gone on the best first date of your life, having just received the most feel-good compliment from the most important person in your life), or riding low (having just received news of the death of a loved one, having just been told by the person youâve developed real feelings for that they are not interested, or having been informed that the job youâve been looking forward to doing so much will be going to someone else), these moments wonât last forever.

There are moments when life is incredibly easy to love. There are moments when life is quite hard to love. Even so, look around at the changing nature of everything around you. Look up at the stars and know that they will soon be replaced by sunshine and blue skies. You can be sad about the fact that everything changes, or you can be excited about it and choose to milk each experience for its richness, fullness, and depth as you live it.
Should you choose to milk each experience for what it is, the way you do it is by:
Falling so deeply in love with this moment that you forget there was or will ever be another one.
On one end of the happiness spectrum is âtrying to be happyâ and on the other is âletting yourself be happyâ. Iâm sorry to say, but they are on opposite sides of the spectrum for a good reason. They cannot and will not coexist. For as long as you are trying to be happy, you are not letting yourself be genuinely happy.
When I say âwhy be happyâ (like in the title of this article), what I really mean is âwhy be anything but genuinely happyâ. Being genuinely happy, contrary to popular belief, does not come from getting everything you want in life (e.g., the perfect partner, job, salary, home, figure and friends), nor does it come from hanging out with perfect human beings who treat you perfectly in every moment of the day. Genuine happiness, research suggests, comes from noticing and embracing a wide array of emotions â both the âgoodâ and the âbadâ. It comes from understanding that this moment, no matter what it contains, is perfect. You see, itâs not the sad, mad, or scared feelings themselves that get us stuck in a rut, pouting for minutes on end. Itâs the belief that feeling this way is bad or not okay that can get you stuck in a rut and hosting an internal pity party for yourself. Now I know that was a bit of a metacognitive mind f*ck, and if you find yourself saying âHuh? âI donât get itâ, donât worry. The take-away is that there is never anything wrong with what you are experiencing. Let me say that againâŠ
There is never anything wrong with what you are experiencing.

The fact that you are feeling happy when you are, sure, is good. Yet the fact that you arenât feeling happy when you arenât isnât bad. It isnât bad to feel bad. You arenât doing life âwrongâ when youâre feeling bad (sad, angry, frustrated, worried, disappointed, nervous, and so on). Iâm sorry to break it to you, but you canât do life wrong. Because everything thatâs happening is right. Even if it doesnât feel good.
So why not adopt âIt isnât bad to feel badâ as your mantra for a while⊠or perhaps my favorite mantra: âI donât need anything to be different right now.â
Every time I say âI donât need anything to be different right nowâ to myself when Iâm feeling anything but great, my face lights up and I feel a deep sense of calm and reassuring joy. Because heck, nothing needs to be different right now! What a relief. When Iâm feeling joy, the joy that Iâm feeling is great. And when Iâm not feeling joy but feeling sadness or frustration instead, thatâs cool too. It doesnât mean that anything is wrong and that I âsuck at lifeâ. Phew!
All thatâs to say that if you run into me on the random weekday evening or weekend afternoon, itâs very likely that youâll find me smiling and enjoying the joys of life. But if you happen to run into me during a series of moments or days when lifeâs experiences call for crying, scowling, and/or swearing, you will find me doing just that, while being a-okay and not judging myself for it.
Happiness comes. It goes. It comes again, and then it goes again. It is the natural cycle of life to exhibit peaks and valleys, yet the search for happiness is often built on an illusory expectation of lifelong, continual, never-ending bliss. And this is precisely why the pursuit of happiness often leaves us hungry and thirsty for the very thing we sought out to capture â ultimate joy.
If trying to be happy doesnât work, then what does? If being happy isnât all itâs cut out to be, then what is?
The antidote to the insatiable search for happiness we so often find ourselves in, it turns out, is to:
Be open.
Be open to all of life, as it is, in this very moment. Be open to the difficult moments. Be open to the beautiful ones. Be open to the possibility of experiencing a sudden whirl of sadness, an unexpected bout of frustration, or unpredictable and unmanageable sense of fear. Be open to the possibility of experiencing the greatest joy youâve ever felt, a kind of joy that makes you say âI didnât know life could feel this good!â Be open to the likely sorrow that follows ultimate bliss and to the inevitable joy that follows despair. Be open to the expected making way for the unexpected, and the uncertain forming into something certain. Whatever you do, if you want to be genuinely happy, be open â to both the joy and the pain, and everything in between.
My wish for you then, is not that you be happy. My wish for you is that you enjoy a lifetime of people, experiences, and revelations that help you get to a place where when someone asks, âAre you happy?â your answer is:
âIn all honesty? No. But I am curiousâ I am curious in my sadness, and I am curious in my joy. I am everseeking, everfeeling, I am in awe of the beautiful moments life gives us, and I am in awe of the difficult ones. I am transfixed by grief, by growth. It is all so stunning, so rich, and I will never convince myself that I cannot be somber, cannot be hurt, cannot be overjoyed. I want to feel it allâ I donât want to cover it up or numb it. So no, I am not happy. I am open, and I wouldnât have it any other way.â (Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete)

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