Are you happy when no one is looking? It’s an excellent question and a thoroughly interesting one to answer because what it’s really asking is, are you happy or are you not?
Happiness is an internal process. Therefore, you may answer that you’re happy for others. Yet, this is not really happiness.
However, are you happy? Like the familiar phrase goes; when you’re in the shower, and you start singing, it’s not because you sing to be happy – you sing as an expression of your happiness.
Thus, happiness is the cause – and whatever shows outside of this is the consequence.
Happiness Disguised Behind a Mask
If you’re happy only when somebody’s watching, it’s nothing but a mask of happiness. Masks usually cover up the reality, or we hide something behind them.
Now, the idea that happiness is within us and depends only on us is a fairly hard pill to swallow. This is because most of the time, we have external reasons that we believe are going to make us happy. Yet happiness is actually an internal process.
True happiness is only possible if it comes from within. Whatever the expression of happiness is, it’s just the consequence and not the other way around. Thus, we sing in the shower as an expression of our state of happiness.
Happiness as A Block to Achieving
When everything is fine, logically, and consciously, we get it – we know that happiness is within us. But, when something happens to those people we love, happiness from within becomes harder.
When my son Hayden, went into hospital he spent two hours in surgery. As I waited for the results, I knew I could utter the mantra of happiness is within me, repeatedly. But I knew it wouldn’t make me feel content and happy then.
We have so many conscious ideas in our lives, but they don’t always make a difference to us. If an idea is not rooted within our life or a part of our reality, it merely exists to remain just that – an idea, stressing us even more.
So, as I was waiting for Hayden to reappear from his surgery, repeating to myself that happiness is within me would stress me out even more. And it was just because I couldn’t feel it. Repeating the mantra meant I would stress the fact that I didn’t feel it!
Understanding the Real Concept of Happiness
Some months later, I heard a popular song on the radio repeating a powerful phrase, ‘it’s going to be okay.’ I immediately felt myself going back in time and felt that everything was available. I had all the opportunities, and everything was going to be okay.
It was at that moment that I finally got it! I grasped the concept of happiness within you by just feeling that as long as I had myself, my wit, my emotional intelligence, and whatever made me who I am – I was going to be okay.
Psychologists say that when we’re going through hard times, we shouldn’t tell ourselves that it’s fine because it is not fine. The concept that it’s okay right now is going to create more stress. We must remember that it is going to be okay – as long as we stay on track.
The whole idea of happiness within you makes sense when you allow yourself those moments of being down and not forcing it and just knowing and trusting that no matter what – eventually everything is going to be okay.
Individual Happiness and Other People
Scientists and researchers say that we have a massive correlation between our levels of happiness and the strength of our connections in our life.
So, no matter how much happiness is within us, we do need other people. It’s our evolutionary need because we feel that we are safe, we can live, and we won’t die if we have others and a close connection.
Having people and close connections in our life are crucial to wellbeing, alongside having bonds, close ties, and maybe some kind of intimacy, emotional connection.
Still, the feeling is within us, it’s our expression; we don’t get it from outside this, it’s just the circumstance that we need. We need people in our lives, but the happiness is our own state, not the state that we borrow from the outside.
Can you be happy when no-one is looking? You can only be happy if you’re happy, no matter whether someone is watching or not.
Photo by Alejandro Alvarez on Unsplash