For as long as I remember, being happy was my number one priority. It's not like it's unheard of to want to be happy, because most people strive for happiness everyday. But the problem with making my happiness my top priority was the fact it ended up making me incredibly sad. How does that even happen? I mean, I did everything that brought me joy and I cut off anything and anyone who brought me the slightest amount of pain, so how did I end up completely on the other side of the spectrum?

In hindsight, I now can see that many of the decisions I made for the sole purpose of being "happy" only resulted in temporary happiness. I should have known, as should everyone else, that happiness is only a feeling and feelings aren't forever. You feel happy but it's not an actual object. As a society we try so hard to make happiness a tangible object; using celebrities to advertise wonderful lifestyles to show how great your life could be, we sell things with the promise of happiness if you invest in it. But as the saying goes, money can't buy happiness.

But I didn't know any better and so I began to just do what made me happy, I ruined perfectly healthy relationships with people just because it got hard and I didn't do things that challenged me because putting in the effort was too difficult and it stressed me out. I struggled everyday, constantly searching for someone or something to fill the void in which I couldn't fill myself. But letting someone else be the source of my happiness was a poor decision because it always ended badly and consequently I was sad yet again.

Eventually I decided that the quote "you get what you give" is what I would live by. Instead of seeking happiness from other people I decided to give it instead. I spent every day making anyone and everyone that I could happy. This worked for a while, it brought me a lot of joy to see other people happy since for some reason I just couldn't be. Recently though, that method hasn't been sufficient enough for me. The void is still prominent and I still haven't been able to be the source of my own happiness. I realized that the real key to happiness is to not seek it, but to let it come as life goes on. Because happiness is a byproduct of life and in order to be happy you must do what living requires-- struggle, fail and go through the hard times. But you always get back up and once you do you appreciate happiness so much more. And for some reason this mentality has given me a lot of comfort, it's nice knowing that there's always a silver lining.

This is not meant to be a negative message and I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't want to be happy. What I'm saying is that if the only thing you want in life is to be happy, you're going to be let down a lot because life is pretty good at doing that. Because you will be afraid, you'll be angry, and you will be sad; but you will also be happy.