Food for Thought

I'm one of those people who believes that happiness is our destiny. Granted, it took me awhile to come to this conclusion. My father helped, always reminding me that I could CHOOSE happiness wherever I was. I never believed it...until now. Looking back, I was always searching for happiness in my life, waiting till I could drive, or until I could date, be done with school, be married, or have kids....still, it always seemed just out of my reach. Until one day I realized that in all my searching I never understood that there was evidence of happiness all around me-the source was within me! I just had to CHOOSE it! I heard a quote once that said, "Striving for happiness is a long, hard journey with many challenges. It requires eternal vigilance to win the victory." To me that means that happiness is more of a pursuit...we have to make a deliberate decision to be happy and then carry it out...simply do it, no matter how hard it may seem. I knew a man who, everytime you asked him how he was, said "Never better"...even when you knew he was facing struggles. He CHOSE to realize that life would always include hard things, but there was a purpose to them; they would make him stronger and bring him closer to God. We can choose, amid all our struggles, to take the bad with the good, to make up our minds (as Abe Lincoln said) to be happy. Practice makes perfect...and I intend to practice.