I have had to learn time and time again that if you place your happiness in the things of this world, you’re doing something wrong. I could compile a list a mile long of the things I believed would make me happy at some point in my life that ended up devastatingly stripping me of my happiness and joy.

Society says that when something bad happens to us, we should be upset. That we should wallow in self-pity until the situation is over and has fixed itself. I don’t know about you, but I believe life is too short for me to just wait around hoping things will change so that I can be happy again. I want to control my situations, and therefore refuse to let me situations control me.

I choose joy. Even in the midst of the worst circumstances imaginable, there is something to laugh about. There is always a reason to smile. Life can be pretty crappy, and I’ll be the first to admit that choosing to laugh and smile through tough times is not the easiest decision to make. It would be so much easier to wait around, hoping something comes along and refills me with happiness, but the fear of not knowing when that could be is so much greater than the task of simply choosing to be joyful.

The way a person reacts in less-than-ideal situations speaks volumes to his character. If a dreadful event occurs and is entirely out of your control, there are two choices to you can choose from. You can either let that situation steal your joy and happiness, or you can choose to find the positives in the situation and make the most of it.

Happiness is temporary, but joy is permanent. Happiness is a feeling that you get when something good happens, but joy comes from a different place. Joy is always inside of you, and while it may be difficult to dig it out sometimes, it’s there because it’s a part of you; it’s deeper than the surface level of fleeting happiness that we’ve settled for so long.

I recently went to Italy and when I tell you everything that could have possibly gone wrong went morbidly wrong, I mean it. From accidentally booking a refugee reception center hostel to walking 60 minutes in search of something that didn’t exist to having a bird fly into our apartment…everything went terribly against our every expectation. My friend and I could have chosen to let those events define our weeklong excursion in Italy, but we didn’t. We laughed until it hurt every time something else went wrong, because there was nothing we could do to make it better and we wanted to be joyful.

Happiness is a feeling based on ever-changing circumstances. Joy is choosing to feel a deeper, more permanent happiness; refusing to let those ever-changing circumstances define your emotions and situation. Joy can be demanding, but it comes from something greater than the things and ‘happiness’ of this world, and at the end of the day I know there is nothing that can take away the joy I have because it is engrained in my very being and rooted in something much greater than any situation I will ever face.