Where do you find the happiness buzz?  Where do you find words and images to express this?

I ask myself this when I am having days that seem challenging.

I know that there are people both worse off and better off.  Nothing is gained by comparisons of guilt, privilege or pity.  Riches come and go, poverty could crush someone and yet some people will always find happiness regardless of what life does to them.

What makes you happy might not make me happy and vis versa but still to think and write of the happiness we feel is to alter the dynamic of all the writing and reality of misery in our world.

I acknowledge, sadness, grief, misery and all those things that come to all of us at some stage but happiness – I welcome!  Happiness and joy make so much more possible.  Yet my happiness should not be someone else’s misery!

Sorrow for anyone without happiness motivates me to seek something to make them happier.  Although we all know people who are bottomless pits of sadness and negativity and for them we have a big challenge to find a salve to their sores.   This is where creativity can play an integral role.

So for my top list of happiness:

1) Doing something caring for others – that will make a difference in their lives.

2) Finding news words and music for a song

3) Seeing the positive in every situation and learning virtues from it to enact in life

4) Remembering that a deeper purpose motivates – for me we are all put here to know and love God, the great spirit and this means seeing beyond ourselves but also working on true knowledge of our selves

5) Being with my family and close friends and doing fun and constructive things together that help change ourselves and the world

6) Listening to inspiring songs and watching inspiring movies

7) Gardening and weeding and thinking about this as a metaphor for life

8) Writing, blogging and creating collages – just anything creative and imaginative with words, images, and now video.

9) Listening to interesting stories

10) Having a vision that leads to a plan and action…

What does happiness look like for you?

(c) June Perkins, word and Image