by Phenicia Anderson

Created on: August 22, 2009   Last Updated: August 24, 2009

When I was five years old my definition of happiness was a brand new bike and never-ending ice-cream cones. As I transitioned into my teens, the definition changed to dating the star of the football team and driving a drop-top convertible. Slowly drifting into my twenties, happiness meant finding a job and a husband and building our dreams together. So now that I've hit the milestone age of thirty, am I happy?

Surprisingly: Yes. And guess what? I don't have the husband and I never got that convertible. Somewhere between graduating from college and quitting my 5th job in 5 years, I realized happiness is not (nor was it ever) a pursuit; it's a state of being. Finally realizing that nothing outside of me was ever going to secure my happiness actually freed me to be happy.

This discovery didn't come without a journey and a lot of heartache. I consider myself to be a go-getter, so when at age 25 I was nowhere near checking off any of the goals on my life plan, things got a little depressing. I kept thinking that if I could only accomplish this, or obtain this promotion or date this really fine lawyer, boy, was I going to be really, really happy. So I started climbing the corporate ladder and networking with all of the right people and joining all of the right associations, feeling certain that with each new affiliation, happiness was inevitable. But it never came. The funny thing about attaching your happiness to something outside of yourself is that when you suddenly lose the thing that brought you happiness, the happiness vanishes too. Then in the blink of an eye, not only are you unhappy, but you're actually worse off than you were before this supposed happiness.

Think about that man of your dreams that was supposed to give you beautiful babies and a lifetime of joy. Didn't your world turn upside-down when you realized he had only been posing as a human being and he was really a pig dressed in men's clothing? Or what about when that position you took 10 years to obtain is suddenly knocked out from underneath you with no explanation other than it's for the overall good of the company? Then suddenly you feel like maybe you never really knew what happiness was.

But of course you know what happiness is. You know what you felt like when you were 7 years old running through the sprinklers with your neighbors without a care in the world. You remember the joy and warmth you felt around the holidays when all of your loved ones are gathered together. That's true happiness.

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