Becoming Who You Are

It’s the ultimate question: why are we here?

Depending on who we ask, the answers might vary between:

• To do God’s work
• To partyyyyyy
• To wage war on others who don’t share the same value system as us
• To pave a better way for future generations
• To work with the state and increase our county’s power
• Because our parents had sex

When thinking about this question recently, what startled me was that there was one key answer that I’d never heard from the people around me when I was younger, the one that seemed really obvious yet was missing from the list:

Happiness

We have emotions. How awesome is that? In that respect we’re unique in the universe: plants don’t have emotions, and the jury’s still out on man’s best friend and his feline companion.

Imagine what life would be like without emotion, if we lived like robots, driven only by our survival instinct. There would be no music, no books, no movies, no beautiful architecture, no hugs, no warmth and no laughter.

Emotion is a beautiful thing and I feel sad to think that people spend their lives doing things that don’t nourish their happiness, one of the loveliest emotions of all.

Especially because it doesn’t take much: we get happiness from big things, like love, acceptance and enjoyment. We also feel happiness from small things, like smiling, helping an old lady across the road, committing a small act of generosity.

I don’t believe that we are here for any divine purpose, but rather that we have been lucky enough to end up where we are on this planet by sheer evolutionary chance.

So let’s make the most of that. Let’s celebrate our happiness. No, even better: let’s celebrate the full spectrum of emotions we are capable of feeling. Let’s LIVE.

This week I am going to be focusing a lot on self-care: getting a good night’s sleep, giving myself time to process events past and present, eating well and negotiating with my inner slave-driver about how much power she has over me.

What can you do in the coming week to make your time on earth more fulfilling? Big or small, it doesn’t matter, tell me in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. The Emotional Debt
2. 12 Steps to Becoming More Curious (and some stuff about cats)
3. The Secret of Happiness