Food for Thought: Happiness

"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light” – Albus Dumbledore

Good old Dumbledore, knowing exactly what to say to comfort people all over the world, muggles and wizards alike.

So I guess you could call this my first proper blog post and I’ve decided to dive straight into something that will hopefully be pretty meaningful.

Happiness is an interesting concept, sometimes it can be filling us up to the brim but other times it seems so far away it might as well be on the moon. A couple of weeks ago one of the teachers at school told a group of girls something that really struck a cord with me (do people say that?), it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot and wanted to share with you.

This something is the concept that happiness and sadness can co-exist; they occur side by side and when you are feeling one the other does not completely disappear from your head. First lets look at happiness, when you are extremely happy it’s a great feeling and you just want to share it with the world but during these times sad things still exists. Maybe you just found out you are topping a class at school, of course you feel great but then you remember world poverty, abuse – these are sad things, however they shouldn’t dampen your mood. They way I see it is that you should recognize these things, acknowledge their existence but don’t choose to let them be the constant focus of your attention. By accepting the truth that sadness exists in the world you are then capable of indulging in the pleasures of happiness.

Of course this also works in the reverse and this second side of the story is often harder to recognize and pursue. When you are having a really bad day, week or are just unhappy with your life it is important to remember that if sadness can exist even during the happiest of times the reverse has to be true as well. Try to remember this because I think it’s a vital source of hope. I believe that it is totally fine to be sad, it’s a natural human emotion, you are allowed to go sit on the couch with a box of tissues and a blanket eating all the chocolate in the house. We’ve all been there and there is nothing wrong with the way that you are feeling just remember that it will get better. Please don’t completely give up on happiness because it seems impossible to reach, just because you are feeling less then perky does not mean that joy will not find a way to creep back into your life, because it will, if you let it. In fact it never really left (remember the whole co-exist concept?).

The way I see it is that your mind has a constant, equal number of happy particles and sad particles, imagine them as little yellow and blue bubbles. Now the events that occur in your life will affect these bubbles causing some of them to expand, depending on what’s happening. When these certain bubbles expand (whether they are blue or yellow) they occupy are larger area then before therefore having an influence on your thoughts and actions. No matter how big these bubbles gets the other coloured bubbles still exist, they might be hiding but they are still there you just need to search a little for them. It may seem really hard but I can promise you that it’s definitely possible.

Anyway I think I’ll stop there. I hope this isn’t just a asjkdfkjsdgk from by brain onto the page because that’s sort of what it felt like while writing. You don’t have to agree with my way of seeing things or anything just some food for thought. Ooh I think that’s what I’ll call these types of posts because I want to do more in the future. Hopefully it wasn't too cheesy :) Thoughts, questions, queries?

Lots of love, Alex