Happiness Comes of Its Own Accord

"Just as you don't have to do anything to help make spring come, the winged happiness that the poets speak of will come on its own. It's coming . Earth will swing on its ellipse whatever you do, and crocuses will come up. The poets say happiness comes like this, though we cannot see the works. It is coming. This is an extremely encouraging insight, and I hope I will be able to remember it."

-- Jennifer Michael Hecht. The Myth of Happiness, p. 319

Spring is coming. Happiness is coming. Or, to paraphrase the Taoist sage Lao Tzu, the world operates perfectly without your interference or help.

So why then do we always feel like we have to do something?

It's the malaise of the modern Western mind. Do, do, do. Make it happen. Take the bull by the horns.

Well, it's all bull! Happiness happens. Life happens. We may be part of that happening, but by no stretch of the imagination do we create it, do we make it happen.

The inner working of happiness are at the same time too complex and too simple for our minds to grasp, for our willpower to control. The complexity is in all the many energies, forces, and elements that impact happiness. The simplicity is in the underlying Unity of it All.

Since you can't summon happiness at your beck and call, does that mean you just sit around with your thumb up your ass sliding deeper and deeper into existential angst and ennui? Of course not! You do what you do. You keep on keeping on. You do what you have to do, and you do what you want to do, and happiness finds you.

Once it finds you, it may not stay forever. Hell, sometimes it doesn't even stay the night! But it will always return. You can count on it, just like spring. Round and round, natural cycles, the happiness merry go round. Happiness is happening now and now and now. What else to do but enjoy the ride?