I have started to notice that people who seem to be the happiest are also the ones who smile the most. Generally I am not a happy person. If I am not careful I will dive right into to whatever cesspool of negativity I let reservoir in my brain. I create a narrative with myself where my job, my apartment, my relationships, my students loans... are all impeding my happiness. I will climb up on almost any cross and then complain about all things that have conspired to get me there. I am always letting myself get punched and kicked and pulled apart by my circumstances and I then excuse myself from being accountable for the things I think and the way I let it affect my life. It is only with a deliberate effort that I can maintain a positive attitude and not go down into the dark hole of self loathing and self pity. I don’t think there is any secret to feeling or acting a certain way. I don’t think mood is mired in mystery. I think there are simply moments in a day where the world presents everyone with a choice. Here are the things in your life. Many of which you have no control over, so now decide. How are you going to react? Decide who you are and who you want to be. These moments are both good and bad, and they happen suddenly and frequently. Your boss tells you that its gonna be a late night when you had plans, you find out that a good friend is coming to visit, you just won great tickets to your favorite bands sold out show, your car breaks down in the middle of a crowded street and you have to push it into a parking lot by yourself, there is some intense drama in your family. These have all happened to me and I wish I could say I chose to shine through the adverse moments and was intensely grateful for the good ones. But I am flawed and human and so in many cases I resented the good times for arriving so sporadically, and drank away the rage and sadness in the bad times. A friend pointed out how destructive this pattern was so I started to watch what people who appear to be the happiest do and take notes. Some are quietly content loners, some are boisterous, gregarious social butterflies but all of them along that spectrum almost always seem to smile. Which I believe is a physical manifestation of their conscious decision to be thankful and hopeful. It is a choice when faced with the randomness of the world to react with the right amount of joy and hope and kindness. Happiness is what happens when someone loves the world enough that all of the tragedy and pain and suffering that seems rampant and constant cannot detract from how beautiful and amazing this planet can be. The feeling of getting a text from an old friend, catching a glimpse of a spectacular sunset from the roof of the parking garage after a long day of work, returning a smile from the pretty girl on the elevator at the grocery store, all things that might go unappreciated in a world where I am too wrapped up in trying so hard to feel badly that I don’t even notice.