We live in an age where the word happiness has become a marketing gimmick. It’s promised in self-help books, quick experiences, and products that guarantee immediate well-being. But the truth is, the more we look for it outside, the more it slips through our fingers.

Because happiness isn’t negotiated, bought, or bartered. It doesn’t travel in business class or reserve a VIP space. Happiness is a shared journey and a personal challenge, and above all, a gift that springs from within and that no one can replace with substitutes.

Substitutes that tire the soul

We sometimes replace that happiness with cheaper substitutes because we think everything has a price. And, I don’t know if it’s out of fear or imagined helplessness, we abandon the effort to achieve that goal, seeking it outside ourselves, like a garnish that could make us more beautiful; we seek outside what is only within us as a faithful reflection.

In other people’s words

“For the love of God, don’t let me smear my hands with Vaseline… aspire to be happy; settle for holding the concept as real. Ten centimeters lower, and you’re fine. Well, having fun is enough for me, and at the end of the Olympics, you bury the plank and don’t want to suffer anymore.”

IT TASTES LIKE CHOCOLATE,

BUT IT’S NOT CHOCOLATE

We are destined for happiness, but not the kind that the self-help brochure says is “with a taste of happiness.”

We are meant to love and be loved.

In other people’s words

“Man cannot live without love. He remains for himself an incomprehensible being, his life is devoid of meaning, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate in it vividly.”

(JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Redemptor hominis , n. 10, March 4, 1979).

The art of living

Each of us is a unique work of art. The palette of colors—the emotions, the feelings, the moments of joy—may be within everyone’s reach. But the work of art is unique, personal, unrepeatable.

From our freedom, we decide every stroke, every brushstroke. And we also accept that, in the picture of life, there will be light and shadow.

Pain doesn’t destroy the work; it deepens it. When lived from love, suffering ceases to be absurd and becomes a fruitful seed.

And this is the root of happiness. Happiness that isn’t prescribed at the health center or sold in pharmacies. Nor does it flaunt its colors at the summer flea market.

Pain and Happiness

And we must accept that pain and love are “the front and the back” of the same leaf.

I am capable of loving to the extent that I am capable of suffering for that love. And I am capable of suffering to the extent that I am capable of loving.

When this is not understood, pain twists the soul.

In other people’s words

“…  The shame of feeling so useless and the rage of dying like a non-Christian Christ.”

“And I, tired of loving, hate God with all my might, and I am sickened by anything that suggests anything resembling perfection, goodness, justice, and such holiness. It tires me, bores me, and enrages me…”

Happiness and pleasure

Happiness is to the soul what pleasure is to the body.

Happiness and pain coexist amicably, but pain and pleasure, when present simultaneously, destroy each other.

If we break the natural hierarchical relationship, the  sensitive , which is good in its nature, becomes  sensual  and this sensuality becomes a caricature of human love, confusing means with ends.

Freedom is the jewel that adorns and beautifies our lives, but it carries with it the responsibility of “carrying ourselves.”

In other people’s words

“I know that if I’m persistent, I can reach the peak of happiness. But how hard is persistence, never looking back, looking back, looking back and not feeling pain…”

Start over every day

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” That oft-repeated phrase is actually

deeply Christian. Every day is a new beginning.

The past is experience, never residence.

Summer is ending. Stopping, being quiet, and listening to ourselves can help us recycle what we’ve experienced …

The poet William Ernest Henley

“I am the master of my destiny, I am the captain of my soul”

What can I do?

A poem by Mario Benedetti can give clues

Don’t give up, you still have time.

To reach and start again,

Accept your shadows, bury your fears

Release the ballast, resume flight.

…

Don’t give up, please don’t give in,

Although the cold burns,

Even if fear bites,

Even if the sun sets and the wind dies down,

There is still fire in your soul,

There is still life in your dreams,

Because every day is a beginning,

Because this is the hour and the best moment,

Because you are not alone,

Because I love you.

Whoever has a FRIEND is saved.

God is THE FRIEND who always looks upon you with infinite mercy and is not part of the commercial chain, nor is he listed on the stock market…