It was something of a surprise to me to come to see that happiness had very little to do with the temporal and intense experience of living at the highest peak of intensity – of being “happy.”

Being “happy” is really only a very small part of happiness for me.

I think the lower my own view of myself and the lower my expectations, the greater chance I have of using and appreciating what I have.

If I didn’t know how poor I was in so many ways, I couldn’t possibly appreciate what I am about, a key element of my own notions of happiness. If I didn’t face my weakness, I couldn’t see my strengths.

For me, being happy is like taking care of a moody but beautiful plant – it requires constant water, light, color, movement, it isn’t one thing but many things.

Happiness is not a matter of feeling joyous and intense, it’s more complex, more nuanced, a question of balance and order and pace and learning not to lie to me. In fact, learning not to lie to me has made me happier than any kind of riches or glory or praise.

I think happiness is about silence as well as sound, balance and harmony.

When I tried to be happy by filling all the silences in my life in with sounds, by turning all quiet time into work, by turning my whole being into doing, then all I was doing was helping everybody else to make a mess of life on earth.

If I have no silence, I can’t hear any kind of music.

If I have no rest, I never know peace.

If I have no nature, no trees or animals, then I am cut off from my rightful place on the earth, and my own precious history as a human being. I am broken.

It was too easy for me to twist my life all out of shape with action, ambition, fear, and experience, real happiness withdrew from my heart and soul and left me angry and empty.

And in pieces.

Finding happiness for me is about learning where to look for it, and as it turned out, I was looking in all of the wrong places, as I had been taught and told and expected to do. I found much happiness in my own imperfection, the gateway to awakening for me.

Happiness is a lonely process, there is no single book, song, recipe for it, not all of the happiness gurus in the world can make the world happy. I can only do that for myself. I can only do it by being alone, not looking to others for my own answers.

The secret of the imperfect, my fear, anger, inconsistency, fragility, great fall into emptiness, was the understanding of my selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything all of the time, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.

This never stopped this yearning for inner success and outer approval. It’s never over, there is no end to it. It’s life as a hamster on a wheel.

There was no happiness in that for me, I have found more happiness in knowing what I am not, and can’t do, and won’t have,  than the constant exhausting and bloody struggle for success, and money and security. Small is bigger. Less is more.

What a surprise to wake up one day and see that I had none of those things I spent most of my life seeking, yet I was finally happy.  Not every day, not every minute but when I shrink the idea down to real life, I could fit inside of it.

I am happy with who I am and what I am and what I have and am gladly willing – happy – to give up the rest.