WHAT IS HAPPINESS??
Simply put in one word, CONTENTMENT Happiness is a destination and that destination is contentment. One cannot truly be happy unless they are contented with what they have and it is this contentment that will give you a heart of gratitude.
It doesn't matter how much money you have, how carefully structured and well planned out your life might be or how physically endowed you are, once there is absense of contentment all will be meaningless.
I one time saw a picture of three children who came first, second and third in a race. The one who came third raised up her bronze medal in excitment while the one who came first was holding her gold medal down and was crying bitterly stretching out her hand to the girl that came third in an attempt to collect her bronze medal. It is lack of contentement that will make you as an individual look for happiness in another person's life, count another person's blessing while constantly shouting God when.
Whenever I would want to complain of how I feel my growth process is slow because I subonsciously want to compare my life with someone elses maybe because we are of same age bracket, my friend would scold me. In his words, if you are not grateful for the small ones how will the big ones come? how do you hope to hit it big when you do not recognize the process? after which he will start counting my achievements for me and then I'll realize I was gradually drifting off contentment and pull myself back and just as I have pulled myself back out with sadness and hello Happiness.
We all do not have equal opportunities at life, we are all striving based on the opportunities and resources made available to us and if we lack contentment, we fail to appropriately utilize what is being made available and as such, we loose sight of happiness and start embrassing misery. Thus the journey becomes overwhelming and we start feeling miserable.
Happiness they say is free but at the same time, it is very challenging to sustain and while we are busy chasing happiness that is non-existent out there we loose the happiness stored in abundance within us.
Most times it's not that things are not working out well as should, the problem is the disconnection from contenment because at a point, we've fallen short of gratitude. Even when things are working and moving at a standard pace, it will still feel everything is slow and falling apart but then you'd see a person who doesn't even have quarter of what the other person have feeling so pleased and impressed by life because they have a heart filled with gratitude and an attitude of contentment.