Happiness Outside In

You have dinner with friends, you play a couple of highly competitive sets of tennis, you watch the sunset over a lake, at a flea market you find the perfect desk chair for next to nothing, and you're happy! So, what the hell do I mean when I insist that happiness begins within?

All those externals, as well as a million and one others, seem to make you happy. And indeed they are very pleasurable experiences. What they do, however is not make you happy, but help you tap into the vast reservoir of happiness that exists deep with in you. They are your pathways into the happiness that waits patiently and always for you to discover it.

So, please continue to do those things that make your heart sing. And even add more paths to happy to your repertoire. The more externals that lead you to an internal state of happiness, the better off you are.

But don't rely upon any of them exclusively. For when the friends aren't available for dinner, and the tennis courts are frozen over, and the sunset is covered by clouds, and the flea market offers up nothing but used DVD's and tube sox from China, where will you find happiness? Within. In your soul, in your heart of hearts, where it truly always resides.

Enjoy the world and all it has to offer! But remember that is the experience of life itself that is the real source of happiness.