On the Right to Happiness

Help me make sense of this: why is it that, when we feel happy here and now, we so often start hunting for reasons not to accept that happiness — to push it away, to avoid it?

Maybe it’s the residue of childhood wounds, or an inheritance from a Soviet upbringing, where standing out was frowned upon. How dare I — everyone around me is just getting on with life, and here I am, happy?

It’s as if some fear of being happy lives inside us — a self-imposed ban, an awkwardness… maybe even shame. We ask ourselves: do we deserve this? Are we worthy of it? We tie happiness to templates and stereotypes, to society’s moral codes, customs, cultural habits, the opinions of “experts” and idols, to our own achievements, our wealth, the pictures in our feeds. We measure our happiness against someone else’s, judging by the packaging, never looking inside.

The body feels happiness unconditionally, at the level of hormones — but the mind goes looking for the catch. It doubts the feeling, tries to validate it through the opinions of others, demands more. Or it starts planning: how long will this last, how do I turn it into a system? And the result, as usual, is grief from too much thinking.

In this war against our own happiness, we find — or invent — arguments to cause ourselves suffering, because we were taught that to exist is to ache and to struggle.

But what if there is no good and evil in life, no “done” and “not done,” no “right” and “wrong,” no “acceptable” and “unacceptable”? What if the only thing that exists is “what makes us genuinely happy,” and its opposite? Maybe that, and that alone, is the true compass for choosing a path and making decisions.

What if we told the universe: “I give myself the right to be happy unconditionally — my own happiness, not hostage to anyone’s opinion or any outer circumstance. I treasure it, and I savour every moment. Thank you for each one.”

Here’s to being happy by birthright! 😎