A couple I know recently broke up. “I’m just not happy,” one of them stated.
“Why?” I asked. “What happened?”
“It’s complicated,” she said.
Since their heart-wrenching breakup, I’ve had some time to reflect on happiness and how I have managed to stay married for twenty-three years.
Happiness is an emotion, and like any emotion, it can come and go. For some, happiness crashes in like a giant wave. For others it slowly escalates like the rising tide. But for a few rare people out there, happiness is not an event–some outside force dictating how and when they feel joy, rather, it is a choice. They are happy because they choose to be happy. Freedom cannot occur until a person learns to control their emotional fate. Or in other words, nothing can bring me down unless I allow it.
My life isn’t perfect. I have real problems like anyone else. But I choose to be happy and that makes all the difference.
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln
My favorite picture of my husband and me. We are happy!
Rebecca Carpenter, copy editor and author 
Sweet!
Thank you, Tina!
So true little sister, it took me 45 years to figure it out! But I choose to be happy!