“Happiness is never stopping to think if you are”- Palmer Sondreal

So, you mean to tell me that Oprah Winfrey sent millions of people on a wild goose chase some good ten years ago when she and Sara Ban Breathnach started this whole “Happiness Movement”.  Literally millions of people hit the book store to buy their gratitude journals and a copy of Sara’s newest book and hence a whole new genre of books was created; the “How to be Happy Genre”.

I fell for it, as did hundreds of other women I knew.  There is nothing women are better at then the re-examining of every minute detail of their lives and the lives of the three best girlfriends around them as well as the three best girlfriend’s partners, bosses, and extended family; not to exclude neighbors, pastors, and bartenders.  With the backing of our media giant behind us we began to examine our lives.  Big time. We began with the Gratitude movement, then the Zen movement, then the Simplicity movement, then the Buddhist movement, then the Transcendental movement, then the Spirituality movement, and finally the Movement movement. 

I should have caught on when my husband said, “If those books are supposed to make you happy, why do you have to keep on reading new ones?”, but I am at heart a stubborn girl and I kept with it.  I not only kept with it but I scoffed at him the, unhappy soul.  Don’t beleaguer me on my quest to happiness, peasant.  If there was a secret to a 24-7 smile I wanted in and I was willing to leave all uninvolved parties behind in their mire of unhappiness.

In retrospect, however, perhaps my hubby and Palmer Sondreal were onto something I didn’t know.  Perhaps they knew that no one else can tell you how to be happy.  Perhaps they knew happiness couldn’t be found in the pages of a book. Perhaps they knew that the micromanaging of every aspect of our emotional lives is both fruitless and exhausting and leads to anything but happiness. Perhaps they knew you should just have a yard sale and get rid of all the books on how to be happy and just be.

Because if you really think about your happiest moments you realize that in those moments you weren’t doing much thinking at all.  Way to use your brain Becky….happy now?