Tag Archives: Happiness

I Celebrate What I Do Have

April 14, 2013 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

Do you celebrate the things you do have?

Day 13 By Jon Hilton

It can be difficult in our society to really appreciate all that we do have today. There is always another commercial that tells us what we should have, or how we should look, even though what we have and how we look is just fine.

I think that I do currently celebrate the thing I do have, and not worry too much about the things I don’t have but it has not always been that way and it seems many other people have problems appreciating things as well.

The Culture of Want

This toy was really awesome, I used to wind it up and jump stuff, but it only made me happy until it broke.

From the time I was very young I can remember being bombarded and brainwashed with images on television which were designed to get me and my peers to desire products enough to scream until we started to get them. From breakfast cereal made totally of sugar to toys that we couldn’t be happy without. I was a child of the 70’s and that means that the marketing at the time was quite mild compared to today.

This was the manner in which the feeling of want was fostered in my generation. It was built up even more as we grew older and became serious consumers. We needed to have certain things to be happy, and without those possessions happiness was going to elude us. The biggest problem is that there is never a level where you have accumulated enough, you just see another level of consumption.

Captain Kirk was always a happy toy. Set your phasers to happiness and lets explore the galaxy!

The young people of today are really the victims of a marketing in society which continually tells them not only what toys they need, but what clothes to wear, how their hair should look, and also what types of relationships they should desire. The intended market is younger than you might imagine. If you have young kids, watch television with them sometime, it is a non stop barrage of self esteem destroying marketing.

As for the adults of the world, you would think that after a while you would find a level of accumulating possessions where you would be able to sit back and say, “Wow, I have a massive amount of crap here, I am really happy.”

Yet you still do not feel happy, and corporate advertisers are happy about that, because they can start to sell you other things to fill the void and finally end your unhappiness. It is a fools journey, yet we all take it day after day.

Happiness Is Inside You All Along

I think that everyone eventually comes to the conclusion that happiness doesn’t come from things you buy. There is always a feeling of happiness no matter how brief that accompanies buying a new thing. Yet it also fades away quite quickly leaving you to wonder why you are not happy about the new car, Ipad, computer, or large screen television.

Real happiness can never come from things, ever. It is the lie of Madison Avenue that owning a certain product should make you feel a particular way. No matter how many cars, houses, or electronic devices you own, if you are lacking appreciation for life on the inside there is going to be empty feelings of want and unhappiness left.

We actually put our happiness off by telling ourselves that when we own this or that then we will be able to feel happy. When the choice to feel happy is really inside you each and every day during each and every moment. All you have to do is notice it.

Appreciating Today

Being able to celebrate what you do have is the path to happiness. There are always going to be things that you don’t have. Nobody can have it all.

Yet you will always have exactly what you need at any given moment. Appreciating what you have and the happiness that is with you right now at this second, seems to be the lightning rod that attracts more situations that make you feel this way.

Look at the little things you have that make you happy, from the weather, to a cup of coffee in the morning. Whatever it is that makes you feel good appreciate it. You will be surprised how many good things start showing up in your life to be appreciated.

Personally, I spent many years chasing the dream of owning all of my happiness. Looking to the future and thinking when I get there I will be happy. Only to find that there was always a new destination for happiness and it was always ahead of me.

Now I think that I do appreciate the little things because they are in the here and now. I have talked about my gratitude journal before and I mention it in passing again because I am grateful for the time each day that I spend being grateful for all that I do have. It is not magic but things seemed to clear up pretty well when I started feeling really grateful for what is in my life. Rather than longing for, and feeling bad about what I did not have. Or worse yet worrying about what might be taken away.

I do not know what “things” tomorrow will bring, but I do know that most likely they will be exactly what I need. So I think I do celebrate what I do have.

Do you celebrate the things you do have?

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you’ll find, you get what you need.

Personal Projects

Are You Truly Living

February 6, 2013 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

What is the difference between being alive and truly living?

by Jonathan Hilton

All people are going to answer this question differently depending on where they are in their life. To me being alive is a fact of nature, and enjoying life and living for a purpose is truly living. But how do you enjoy life?

Other people will answer this very differently. It only takes a few visits to any number of blogs to experience the wide variety of philosophies and beliefs that exist.

Young people are struggling to master life, yet so hopeful about living it is encouraging While older people are resigned to the fact that you may never figure it out everything there is to know about life, but they share their thoughts and experiences.

One of the things I like about reading so many different people’s opinions is to be exposed to ideas that are different from mine. Valid yet different and I think that is a powerful force of growth. These are my thoughts on truly living.

The problem with Life

For me there is a question that came to me as I got older and thought that I was on the

questions about living — We all have questions, I know I did.

path I should be on. After carefully contemplating the experiences I have been fortunate enough to have in life I came to the conclusion that being alive was not enough and that I needed to start truly living and for me that meant I had to make a lot of changes in my perceptions of people, life, God and everything that at one time I was sure of.

I wasn’t sure what was “right”, but I knew there was more to life than a conditioned accumulation of material goods to supply comfort to life.

What comfort did I ever give to others? What did I contribute? Even as an educator, I was contributing stories about living which happened long ago, espousing the morals and actions that young people should aspire to follow, with the awareness of the world around me the size of the head of a pin.

I don’t think I consistently enjoyed what life gave me. There are easy things to enjoy and appreciate, like those we love, and those that love us, a sunny, beautiful day, a large sum of money, all of these can be easily enjoyed, but how many people pass through a day without having gratitude for anything in their life, because they are too busy looking at what they don’t have.

I was one of these, searching for the right amount of stuff that would bring happiness with it. I never found that.

The Past

Future past and present sign in the sky — Which direction do you follow?

One of the biggest problems people face,when trying to truly live is that they always seem to distract themselves from the moment they are currently experiencing.

Perhaps spending time with someone you love, reading a book, exercising, or doing whatever it is you do, because you allow yourself to be distracted by things that make you feel the moment you are in is not a good enough thing.

One distraction is the past, which often allows you to reminisce about the past and feel that things were so much better back then, when you were happy.

Often the past is not quite what we remember it to be and it really doesn’t matter in the scope of today. It is over and gone, good or bad and to short change today for yesterday is selling something tangible and of extreme value for nothing but a fantasy.

Often I had looked to the past to the good old days, which were nice memories, but other than lending experience to today, couldn’t help make me very happy or allow me to truly live.

The Future

Others choose to focus on the future, planning and scheming the best way to route their lives to get to the point where finally they will be happy. They think that if they do this particular thing, at this particular time then I will be happy, satisfied, successful, or whatever.

The problem with this is that when you put all of your focus onto tomorrow you miss the great things that are happening today. You can prepare for the future with the actions of today and enjoy today at the same time, the difference is that you don’t put anything off, like being happy and satisfied with life or anything else. Tomorrow may never come and rarely does it happen as you plan, so putting happiness off is a bad gamble that will most likely never pay off.

I’ll Be Happy When I am Rich

Materialism is another distraction that keeps people from enjoying the moment, often it goes hand in hand with waiting for the future, but tying your happiness into the acquisition of some material thing is going to stop you from appreciating today, because you are going to be thinking that happiness is going to come when you get that house, or car, or Ipad or whatever.

The satisfaction of that acquisition will be short-lived and soon you will be looking for the next thing that should bring happiness and satisfaction to your life, as you ignore the opportunity for happiness that you have in your experience today. Being grateful for what you have will allow you to enjoy the day. If you don’t believe me, then try it. Be truly grateful for what you have.

Your Choice

choice for life — You can choose if you are alive or truly living

So truly living to me is the appreciation of what life is giving you right now in this moment.

That doesn’t mean that it will always be perfect. Sometimes there are painful things in life, and we have to deal with feelings that are not so nice, people get sick, accidents happen, people die, life is not perfect and there is no guarantee that everything is going to go your way.

However, there is a choice that comes pinned to each of those experiences to make it a positive or a negative factor in your life. Only you can decide for yourself the difference between being alive and truly living.