-My mind and peace aren’t for sale. 

Sometimes, I miss my older self more than anyone and anything else. I want to go back to the times when I was a baby. Why do you think happiness is so cheap when you are around babies? You make funny faces and noises just to see them content. This is because babies allow you to feel complete, without any judgement about your appearance or reputation. Painful thing is we were all once babies and used to spread love just with our smile. 

I remember my first success: the highest score on an exam. After that, more people reached out to me to be friends. That felt great for someone like me who had not been exposed to such a big community. Whenever I detected that I was falling behind, I used to feel like a failure and useless even when I had many things to be grateful for.

My grades were my confidence marker. Why? Because I had already determined the extent of my happiness. My whole world was revolving around one particular tag as more people started to respect me. But I dismissed the point that they were close with me for not who I was but for what I had. I hate the way people needed me only when i was top of the class. I compromised the little girl who used to create and see happiness all around for the sake of approval and recognition. Unfortunately, we all lost our capacity to be happy for no reason. We have been manipulated into believing that worth is defined by money, decent work or prestigious university admissions.

We are rarely pleased with our life because we attached our happiness to goals. We are used to saving up happiness for successful moments. Also, this world isn’t driven by greed but by envy. If only you wished to be happy, this could be easily achieved. But we wish to be happier than others which is difficult, for which we believe others to have more than we do. It is so much easier now to look around and say: I may have more than I used to. But, relative to that person, I don’t feel like I’m doing that great. On you way of superiority and perfection, You start to treat differently to your boss, different to friends, different to parents. In all of this, the real you is lost. You might get to the point that nothing seems to bring joy to you.

You remind yourself that everyone has different stories and circumstances. The person who has more achievements than you may have started earlier. Or the person who won the lottery can cry in the bed at night for feeling depressed. See, no one is perfect out there. But, here you want to be like everyone who has something glittery and shiny. This is like nurturing false hope in your heart just to see them crushing every piece of you every day. Instead, your heart should be your compass that guides you on what you need and want. And your mind is capable of figuring out how. Don’t forget yourself in the noise of this world. 

If you spend your life chasing butterflies, they’ll fly away. But if you create a beautiful garden, butterflies will come themselves. Happiness is the capacity to which we allow ourselves to feel good. Happiness is in the things you can choose to feel, like love. You should either fell it in the moment or you miss it like a butterfly. We should accept and even embrace pains of life. The hardship you are gong through while studying, difficulty in waking up early for school or your first heartbreak. You might experience them again, but they wont give you that first exceptional feelings. You will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. 

I know the self-discovery journey is lifelong. And I’m at the beginning. it has been a while since I started to do everything with self-awareness, curiosity and compassion. It feels like the whole world is trying to please me. For me, happiness can be as small as the smell of my morning tea, the rays of sunshine kissing my cheeks or the random flower I see on street. So, here is a kind reminder: Happiness is undefinable and you are beyond the titles of this world.