Happiness is a funny thing.

We all want it and crave it and look for it, and most of us have NO clue where to find it.

Or how to be it.

We try The Way Of The Stuff (hoarding shiny, luxurious things and shiny careers and shiny partners and shiny experiences).

And if that doesn’t work (and I can promise you it won’t), we might try The Way of No Stuff (where we become minimalists, getting rid of stuff, dreaming of living in a tree house, off-the-grid, self-supporting, meditating in a meadow all day long).

But we’ll still miss out on being happy most of the time.

It’s funny (and at bit sad, too) when we start to believe that we need to buy books on happiness.

That we need to follow courses on the topic, and study it and work really hard.

That we need to LEARN to be happy, on top of our discomfort.

That’s funny, and quite sad, and a tiny bit ignorant too.

Because the thing is: young children don’t need formal training or spiritual exercises to be happy.

They just are.

They were born that way, and so were you.

It’s just that we forget.

We become professional overthinkers.

We learn to overcomplicate, to doubt, to be skeptical, to distrust.

We believe that we HAVE to understand everything.

And all that mental activity starts to drag us away from simply feeling good.

For me it is all quite simple (and I REALLY like simple).

Is see happiness as the absence of identification with our personal story.

Or: the absence of mental pressure.

Free from thinking.

That’s why children are so easily happy most of the time: they haven’t been burdened with the confusing responsibility of cognition yet.

They don’t consider themselves to be throbbing intellects on legs.

That’s also why many people only realize that they were happy when the feeling is long gone.

Happiness is being free from your thoughts, even when they keep arising.

Happiness is the mere, most fundamental experience of being alive.

Being aware IS happiness.

Not being aware OF something (the thing we do all day long, the human obsession), but the awareness itself.

Happiness is simple, it really is.

It’s the feeling of being, not being something.

It’s unconditional.

It is before everything else.

Before the critical, unsatisfied mind.

And we were born that way.

Isn’t that funny?

—

(Photo @jonathanborba, for Unsplash)