Happiness. I’ve sought after it like a bounty hunter. But just when you think you’ve found it, quite often it slips through your fingers…

There is an iconic scene in the film “Rocky 2” where Rocky’s trainer challenges him to catch a chicken running around him in an enclosed area. The lesson was to teach Rocky some agility in the ring, but in watching this physically powerful fighter struggle to catch the little chicken, it reminded me of how often we struggle to grasp our own peace, our own happiness. Even if it’s right at our own feet.

Happiness is fluid, even slippery. It ebbs and flows. Or maybe that’s just what we’ve made it out to be. How often do we make happiness conditional, an end result, a desired outcome? Only when things go exactly as we want them to go we will allow ourselves to enter the realm of happiness.

Until the world once again doesn’t live up to our expectations.

If happiness is so important to us, why do we leave so much of it to chance, empowering the unknown, waiting for the stars to align?

EMBRACING IMPERFECTIONS When I look a little deeper, there is already plenty to be happy about. Gratitude is the ultimate paradigm shift. Is everything perfect, exactly how I think it should be? No. Going deeper, is everything ever always perfect?

Author/musician Gerard Way suggests happiness is about deciding to look past the imperfections. Perhaps, though, it’s about embracing what we call imperfections and all they have to teach us. My greatest lessons have come during the times when things were judged by me to be far from perfect. Time turns struggle into wisdom, and with wisdom we understand imperfections are paradoxically a part of a divine perfection.

My journey towards happiness is now much more of a pilgrimage of contentment. It is a patient march towards truth, understanding, and wisdom, which ironically births the peace and happiness I am no longer struggling to capture and contain. Nothing more to chase.

Not even a chicken.

Our stars are already aligned. It’s inherent in our own creation. We just need to see them that way.

It’s a great day to be you!