The search for the recipe to happiness

Ingredients; the list goes on and on. Some say all you need is to accept yourself and you'll feel happy. Some say lots of friends, a dog, a cat! a big house, would make anyone in their right mind happy. Some say money doesn't buy happiness, that it's the connections you make, the experiences you have, that's what makes you happy.

But how can you be happy even if you love yourself, when you have no one to share your love or experiences with? When you don't have the time, the money, the energy, to try things that make you feel that elusive emotion. Happy.

How can you be happy living in a big house with a cat or a dog, if the only thing you do is sit in that big house with your pet, greeting the endless stream of people you call your friends, that constantly slows through your house, a stream, a river, that you're drowning in.

How can you be happy if you have no money? The only people that say money doesn't buy happiness are the ones who have never experienced homelessness firsthand. That have never experienced not being able to afford medical care for a loved one who would die without it. That have never experienced the gnawing pain of hunger you get when there's no money left to buy food with. How then can they say that money doesn't buy happiness? 

Maybe the act of searching for happiness is what makes us so unhappy. Always being told to find, to do, to be, to become what makes you happy, that we don't stop and realise the moments, remember the times when we had reached our goals. To be truly happy. To feel that overwhelming sense of tranquility, of rightness, to realise that in that moment nothing else matters, the flame that is happiness warming you from within. An inner peace and quiet.

But then it fades, the drug of happiness leaves your system and all you are left with is a feeling of loss and desire. Desire to feel that way again. We're all addicts, all trying to get our fix of what makes us feel happy again. It's a vicious cycle that we can't escape. 

There is no recipe for happiness.