Being happy feels like the ever-elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Once you have it, it’s gone so quickly. Will it ever stay?

Why have we decided that happiness should be the goal?

In middle school, I had a teacher who was always incessantly happy. Literally all the time. No, that is not an exaggeration.

She was so cheerful it was painful to watch. In a way, it felt like she was in a delusion. How could we be in the same world and she sees none of the hurt or pain? It felt more like willful ignorance and denial than trying to be positive.

To me, when something is painful or sad, it makes sense to feel pain and sadness over it. That’s a normal reaction. I’d rather acknowledge what’s really going on than try to pretend it doesn’t exist.

I don’t like when things are swept under rugs. In fact, I don’t have any rugs inside my house at all! But that is beside the point.

Being in a perpetual state of happiness doesn’t leave room for the complexity of the human experience and emotion.

What if we strived for wholeness instead?

Wholeness accounts for all kinds of days, even down days. Striving for wholeness allows us to experience the full range of human emotion holes space for tough emotions without assigning the meaning of personal failure.