I finally get a chance to blog. It's been a while due to multiple trips home (by home I mean St. Louis) and a lot of driving. That and I really have not felt inspired to blog about anything due to the fact I have been focusing on myself and spending time with the ones I love while I was in town... and reading Harry Potter... Anyway...

Regardless, lately I have been thinking a lot about happiness. I received an email today from Goodlife Zen, a blog I subscribe to and regularly read. Mary Jaksch, the author of the blog, gives inspiration to question things in life and reduces them to something simple.

Today's post asked the question "Is happiness a worthwhile goal?" Mary even goes further to explain the positive psychology movement. For those of you who aren't aware there is a new segment of psychology that focuses specifically on being happy. University of Pennsylvania has an entire positive psychology department devoted to the research, education and training of helping people become happier. Gretchen Rubin has spent a whole year, devoted an entire blog, and penned a book dedicated to finding Happiness. There is a website out there called "Happier.com" which guarantees you will be happier in 7 days after measuring, tracking, and improving your happiness. After exploring the website you can't take a test without paying the $4.95 monthly fee. Lastly, there are iPhone apps that can track your happiness... for a fee.

Mary then poses the question "Is happiness a worthwhile goal?".
Can you box happiness up and sell it?

It doesn't seem that simple to me - singing up at a website, downloading an iPhone app, looking elsewhere rather than inward. Expecting immediate gratification without having to do the dirty work - looking inside ourselves and exploring why we are not happy, assessing our dark areas and learning from them? It seems as though this movement is making it seem that it is inappropriate to express other emotions such as sadness, anger, and anxiety.

A commenter on the website made me think perhaps maybe society is mislabeling inner peace as happiness. This makes me think of happiness as just another emotion rather than a state of being. I believe inner peace comes from being happy with the choices you made in life - or at least just accept your choice good or bad as what they were - your choice. Isn't that the ultimate goal - to be content with oneself - to have peace of the decisions one made in life?

I believe myself to have inner peace. I feel okay with the decisions I have made in my life. I came to this conclusion realizing I cannot change my past, I can only learn and apply those lessons in the present. Am I happy? Presently, absolutely. But I have my moments where I am anxious, mad, and sad. I am not always happy - I believe it is near impossible. I have learned a lot in the past year with love and loss and being at peace with oneself and one's lot in life. Mine came from letting go of wanting what other people have and being okay with what I have and realizing the difference between need and want - holding out for what I truly love.

So the question still is, is happiness a worthwhile goal? A goal, no, but I believe it most certainly is attainable. With that being said, if you truly want to be happy you have to seek that out in yourself - not in a nicely wrapped package for $4.95/month.