What’s Happiness?

When I came to USA as an immigrant, I was a wide-eyed girl with lots of hopes and dreams and had very high expectation of living my American dream.

In search of happiness, I joined the race of becoming successful like everyone else and did everything American society has ingrained in us as “successful”. This includes getting higher education, working in the most renowned and successful corporate company, having a very visible career as an engineer, working technologically advanced space explorations programs for NASA, having a family and living in a status quo house that provided an image of “perfect family”.

Was I chasing happiness or success, in either case, I was not feeling it in spite of achieving everything one can hope to? This is when I decided to spend my waking hours in self exploration. I have been on this journey for a while and it is never ending. However, I am collecting many nuggets of wisdom along the way and the best one I have for you today is that, “Happiness is unique to each of you and can only be understood by you as you discover yourself like peeling the onion and no one else can define happiness for you and create happiness for you”. Therefore, when we follow the crowd in search of happiness, we get disappointed because we are following a shadow that is an illusion like a mirage. I love Mark Twain quote on Happiness, “Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like its heaven on earth.” By acting on Mark Twain’s advice, we may end up falling in love with ourselves and that is what we owe to ourselves.

what is happiness, blog, shehnaz soni
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