We’re all trying so hard just to be happy. Gosh, we are. Yet sometimes you can’t help but wonder why you can’t simply have what you want. A kid I teach inspired this thought. He told me about his dog and how quickly his family decided to pull the plug. I understood why. He didn’t.
His dog was incurably sick and needed to be put down.
“They should’ve let him die naturally,” he said.
Deep down, I knew exactly what he meant. But how do you explain to a nine-year-old that sometimes being gone is kinder than suffering?
I’m just being real here. I think I’m old enough to say I’ve seen enough of life to know that pain isn’t always something worth prolonging.
And yet, I’m nobody to make that call. Certainly not his dad. Certainly not his mom. Certainly not any divine force.
As he told me about his dog’s illness, he almost teared up—or maybe he already had, and I just missed it. Then he told me how hard he works to be a good dad to his new dog. He’s only nine years old, and yes, I know part of the conversation was probably his way of avoiding school work. But what he said stayed with me.
Aren’t we all just trying to be happy without having to work so hard for it? Why does it feel like it takes a village just to breathe… just to exist?
Because here’s the truth: some of us are walking only because someone else is helping us keep moving. Therapists. Family. Friends. Sometimes they’re the reason life continues to make sense. Sometimes they’re the reason we find the strength to keep going at all.
Sometimes it feels like it takes a whole village just to stay alive.
So I’m writing this simply to say that, at the end of the day, all we really seek is happiness. Something that sounds so simple, yet often feels impossibly far away.
That’s why sometimes it frustrates me when people tell me to just smile because “life is beautiful.” They don’t know what has been happening behind the scenes. They don’t know the days that haven’t been pretty, breezy, or easy. If happiness were as simple as smiling, we wouldn’t keep writing all these notes, blogs, books, and quotes about how to find it.
Maybe happiness isn’t something we stumble upon. Maybe it’s something we keep choosing, even on the days when it feels out of reach.
And maybe that is enough.