On Overcoming Adversity

Happiness is not something that happens to you, it is something you choose to be.

Across thousands of years and from opposite sides of the globe, a similar wisdom was reached by the Taoists, Buddhists, and Stoics alike: that happiness is a decision, not a circumstance.

Someone who believes happiness is something that happens to you, something that is based on external circumstances rather than something that is completely in your own control, something completely dependent on your own internal decisions and states, will never be happy.

This kind of person will also not make a reliable teammate. Someone who has given up their own agency in their happiness cannot be relied upon when things get challenging or uncertain — they will break, they will quit, they will run and they will blame it all on the external difficulties they faced.

Most people are like this. Most people mistakenly believe that their happiness is dependent on having ‘more of this’ and ‘less of that’ rather than understanding that it is actually dependent on themselves ‘being more of this’ and ‘being less of that.’

These people will always be looking outside of themselves for something missing rather than realizing the part that is missing is within them. Happiness does not come from what we have or what happens around us — it comes from who we are and what we do within ourselves.

Or said another way: happiness is not what you have, it is who you are.

Thus, only way to be a happier person is to be a better person. The path to happiness is the same as the path to being better.

It is that simple, but it is never easy. Because the path to being better is always about facing, and eventually overcoming, hardship.

Only someone who understands that their happiness is dependent only on themselves will be confident and strong enough to survive whatever happens, to stay the committed and figjt through the unavoidable and inevitable difficulties of life.

Because there is no escaping suffering. There is a night for every day, and exhalation for every inhalation, for every pleasure there is pain, for every joy there is grief. So, if hardships are part of life and unavoidable, if you cannot run from them, then the only option is to learn how to be happy in spite of hardships. You cannot escape them, you can only make yourself strong enough to overcome them.

Running from fear, from difficulty, from effort, from hardship only makes a person weaker and more vulnerable to these things the next time they appear. But facing these challenges makes them easier to overcome the next time — because you become stronger and more confident, you become better, you become more than what you were.

Choices like this — to face adversity rather than running away, to stay the course rather than quitting — these are the things that build character, these are the things that make someone a better person. Facing the darkness is what gives a person the power to control their own internal state, and thus create their own happiness.

Happiness then is a choice, not a circumstance — and as such it always forever out of reach for those who do not realize this and do not follow the true path to achieve it.

To everyone on that path, trying to face their fear, trying to stop running or quitting — I know it is hard, but you’re doing the right thing. Just hang in there and take it one step, one day, at a time. This is the only way, but you WILL be better for it, and thus happier.

I’ll see you on the path.

-LM