The Pursuit of Happiness

On campus, there’s this place called the Horticulture Gardens. While walking through the gardens, there’s this cute little cottage with a saying above the doorway that says ”While in the pursuit of happiness, one should stop, and just be happy…” As I thought about this quote, I thought about this past year. I don’t know about you, but my year was filled with disappointments, humiliation, and sorrows, but also new friends and unforgettable memories. Despite everything that happened this past year, the good and the bad, I tried to take a positive outlook , even on the most negative of situations. I had the mindset “Everything happens for a reason, the negatives that i have faced this year will make me into a better person, and I will grow and learn from them.” But everybody has those days where they feel like their whole world is crashing down, one bad thing happens, followed by many others that make you feel like you’re carrying the biggest burden on your shoulders. For me, that day is today.

I’m one of those people who breaks things down and tries to analyze situations. Sometimes I feel like I overanalyze, and if there’s one thing I wish I could change about myself, it would be that. Nonetheless, I still do it and I feel like that is one of the reasons why I find myself getting hurt. Because I take these negative situations that I’m in and try and find the positive in them, which gives me a bundle of hope that everything will turn out exactly how I want it. Who am I kidding? This is life, it’s neither easy nor fair. That’s where my optimistic attitude got me. Don’t get me wrong, optimism is definately not a bad thing, however there’s an extent to which you can be optimistic before you just start living this make believe life. Something that I like to call being “overly optimistic.”

So then, I tried to reverse my way of thinking. I talked to a guy who clearly had feelings for me, but whenever somebody mentioned it that he did have feelings, I denied it for fear of being hurt. That didn’t end too well either, seeing how after a few days of doing this I felt like a more miserable person because all I would do was deny the obvious.

Amidst all my confusion on which outlook on life I should take, I stumbled upon that picture of the cottage and remembered the quote from the Gardens that stated “While in the pursuit of happiness, one should stop, and just be happy.” No sooner had I read that than it hit me. I don’t need to be overly optimistic or be a debbie downer and overanalyze, I just need to be content and happy with my life. Taylor Swift once said, “There is really no such thing as what might have been. There’s what happened and what will happen. I’ve just had to realize that what might have been is imaginary, and it’s this beautiful illusion of how it could have been if you had just done this right or if things had just lined up. But things don’t line up and you mess up for a reason.” I feel like this quote sums up my life. You can’t dwell on the past and think “Well if i did this differently , i may have seen different results.” That will do nothing for you but cause you misery. The only thing you can do is go with it and handle everything that comes at you in life to the best of your ability and be content with that. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned this year is that if you are patient, everything will work out in the end.

One of my favorite quotes says, “We neither grow better nor worse as we get older, but more like ourselves.” I recently discovered how much I like to write, so i created a blog. This blog was not intended for anyone but myself. It’s a way to get my feelings out and just expand on different feelings or perspectives that I have. The issues I write about are always issues that I feel have helped me become the person who I am today. It might seem dumb, but sometimes after I blog, I feel more at ease with myself. So, I'm sharing it with you (: Please feel free to comment !