You Do Not Deserve To Be Happy

::DISCLAIMER:: This post in no way addresses those with chemical imbalances or depression. Discontentment and depression are two very different things. Depression is real, and if you find yourself feeling symptoms of depression please seek help. If you or someone you know is experiencing any type of mental health crisis, UNM’s 24-hour mental health crisis number is 505-272-2800.

We hear people say it all the time. “Don’t I deserve to be happy?” The answer is no. You don’t. And if you really want to be happy, you’ll stop thinking you deserve it. If you really want to be happy, define it, look internally, and be grateful for what you have.

We don’t deserve a partner that never leaves toothpaste in the sink. Your partner’s annoying habits are not a personal attack on you. We only deserve the right to show others what love is, to be kind, forgive, bite our tongues, and ignore the toothpaste. We deserve the choice to love and be happy every day. We deserve the choice to work at relationships or the choice to leave them. Is happiness a clean sink, or a spouse that always supports you?

We don’t deserve to get paid more, get a promotion, or have a more appreciative supervisor. We only deserve the right to wake up every day and choose to work hard at our jobs, our vocations. And if that doesn’t work, we deserve the choice to find another job. We only deserve the opportunity to take pride in our work for ourselves and set an example for others. Who are you working hard for anyway?

We don’t deserve a new car, phone, or 65″ TV. We deserve the opportunity to choose to find contentment with what we can afford, and more so, to find contentment in the things in life that are not actually things. Can joy really be found in an Iphone X?

When we expect to just waltz through life just feeling happy, the slightest speed bump can make you think you are somehow being deprived of something others have that you must go out and find. But when you don’t define happiness, how will you know if you found it? How do you know don’t already have it but you just can’t see it?

Happiness is not an entitlement. It is a choice. It ebbs and flows. Even those who are happiest over the course of a lifetime have unhappy days, months, years, even decades. To expect a constant state of bliss is only setting yourself up to be disappointed.

What we do all deserve, is the right to pursue happiness. Our founding fathers got it right when they talked about the pursuit of happiness. That’s all you get. The pursuit.

There are no guarantees except for the fact that there will certainly be difficult times. But a sense of entitlement will only lead to feelings of deprivation. To know and understand that happiness is a choice, allows us to find happiness anywhere.

You don’t have happiness. You make it.

Too often, we expect to show up every day and have life handed to us. If we go through each day with open hands, won’t our peace and contentment be magically placed in them?

No. And we don’t need open hands. We need open hearts. We need open eyes.