Is it true that it’s hard to be happy?
It takes labour to look after yourself. It takes attention and deliberate effort to be kind to yourself. It takes understanding and patience to be okay with being yourself, and self-confidence and security to be yourself to others rather than being a mirror of who is in front of you. It takes bravery to do what will make you happy. It’s hard to make yourself happy, and harder to keep yourself happy in the long run.
I used to think happiness is given, like an indulgence once in a while. Something like an unobscured view of a rainbow or pink-hued sunset. But actually, I think happiness can be made.
Is it rational, then, to fear that you won’t always be happy? If your emotions are in your control, should we ever be concerned about feeling low?
Are we born with a resting state of happiness, or neutrality? Is it possible that at one’s resting state, they are upset? Is happiness harder for those people?
I guess that it’s easy to remain where one is, and that’s where happiness as labour comes it. If you are feeling low, it will take energy to get out of the lowness. That energy can come from others or from yourself.
On sad days, I see happy people with anger. I don’t think about the work that goes into one being happy. I think of the emotion as luck, biding it’s time before it comes my way. Worlds collide in those moments, too. The world between the “glass half empty” and “glass half full”, between the satiated and the starved.
Demure: a characteristic. To be shy, reserved. Could also be “determined self-control”, according to Merriam Webster.
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