Sitting down on my system to type, thinking of how my phone went bad yesterday and I have no budget for a new one now, I realize I have two choices; either let the problem on ground weigh me down and become sad, or ignore it and think of a solution while staying happy. Anyways, I am going with option B because I realize that happiness is a choice, and one which I must make.
Almost every time we go through a rough phase, our basic instinct is to let sadness overwhelm us; focus more on the pain at hand, instead of the gain the situation might yield in the long run; we tend to compare ourselves to someone we know out there that is seemingly doing better than us; continuously ruminating on these thoughts, we fail to realize that we are on that familiar path again- the dreary paths of depression. We unconsciously choose to go down that path and then begin to lament on how depressed we are, not knowing that a little shift in our perspective of how we view the situation at hand would make a big difference.
The mind, which is the seat of our emotions as I mentioned in my previous article on Mental Health does not have a eye of its own, it works with whatever signal the brain sends to it. The moment the brain tells the mind that there is a mountainous problem at hand that can’t be solved, it runs with that information; it has no trust issue, therefore it does not bother to confirm if the information is correct, in its own mind i.e the minds’ mind, the brain does not lie.
The same way when you put on a car, each part of the engine goes into frenzy, slowly but surely till every part of it becomes hot with time, so it is with the mind; the moment a signal comes from the brain, it goes into overdrive with that signal, working itself up and gradually sending the effect of that signal into every part of the body. That’s why when the brain sends the signal that you just got a promotion at work, it goes into overdrive with it and seeps in the effect into every part of your body; you find your face smiling involuntarily, your feet tapping, your hands swinging, your shoulders raised, your mouth itching to spread the good news, basically every part of your body reacting to the effect of happiness your mind just processed, the same goes for bad news.
Two things in life that people don’t realize are choices are breathing and happiness. Our nose have been so conditioned to grasp the abundance of oxygen around us in the air that we most times don’t realize that we can choose to stop breathing. Why would I do that? Someone might ask, knowing full well that it would kill me and I would reply the person with my own question, why do you choose to stop being happy, knowing that it could kill you with depression? I don’t know if you chuckled, because I just did with that realization. The same way an abundance of oxygen is within our grasp and we are left with the choice to grab it, we have an abundance of things to be happy for, we just need to grab them and send them to our mind.
If you have watched The Originals like I have, you would realize that one thing the Mikaelsons had in common was the inability to grasp the love around them just because they felt there would always be a problem to deal with in their family. It wasn’t obvious until Kol told Rebekkah in season 5 that, “Happiness is a choice which you are incapable of making dear sister.” Happiness is indeed a choice, just that some of us are incapable of making that choice; sincerely ask yourself why you keep refusing to make the choice to be happy.When you pass by those almajiri children that beg for alms on the streets, you see them playing happily and I ask myself why they are happy and I am not, well, I just got my answer, because they are capable of making the choice to be happy and I am, or rather was not.
So from today, I refuse to be incapable of making the choice to be happy. I choose happiness.
