Happy Day to you – how did you start your morning?
Hopefully with a prospect to meander through an amazing day, as you were honored with waking up to it – there is praise to that!
Therein lies the happiness every ‘waking’ day brings.
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International Day of Happiness meets us again. Another yet happy day [like all the rest], but with a reflection of mindfulness – we can wrap our awareness in what is already in us and surrounding us.
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We often imagine happiness as something bright, loud, and easy to recognize. Smiles. Laughter. Celebration.
If this day is that for you – do your ‘out loud’ Happiness Day!
But I’ve learned happiness isn’t usually loud. Sometimes it whispers between notifications, waits patiently in silence, and lingers in the spaces we forget to honor.
Sometimes… it waits quietly.
Between thoughts. Beneath worries. In the pause before we reach for our phones.
And if we are not careful, we’ll miss it, and often do.
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Meeting Yourself in Stillness
There are days when my mind feels like a crowded room—voices talking over each other, to-do lists waving their hands, worries tugging at my sleeve. Do you feel ‘life happening’ too – yes, that is what’s waving and tugging?
Meditation is a respite; it is not about becoming perfectly calm. (If it were, I’d fail before I even sat down.)
It is about sitting anyway. Just for a few minutes, letting the noise settle—not disappear, just soften. Notice breath. Notice yourself just present.
For me, somewhere in that stillness, I remember: I am here. I am okay.
Happiness, I’ve found, often begins there—not in what I gain, but in what I finally allow myself to feel – the stillness, the ‘here’ moment.
Meditation becomes less about silence and more about listening—to myself.
Bring Focus to Something Greater
Prayer comes differently. Where meditation listens, prayer speaks.
Some days, my prayers are polished and proper, where I intercede on behalf of other people who need prayer.
Other days, they are as simple as, “Help me through this,” or “Thank you for getting me here.”
Prayer is where I lay things down that I was never meant to carry alone. It steadies me. Grounds me. Reminds me that even when life feels uncertain, I am not navigating it by myself. And in that reminder, there is a quiet kind of happiness—the kind that doesn’t depend on everything going right.
Guarding Your Joy in a Scrolling World
Then there’s the world in your hand—your phone, your feed, your endless scroll.
It is so amazing to me that most of the times people are on their phones, it is not for anything constructive or important but mostly self-fulfilling. It can be a joy but it tends to defy the sense of ‘happiness’.
It’s amazing, really. We can see celebrations, opinions, comparisons, tragedies, and triumphs—all before a morning coffee. Amazingly, it is uncanny that it can last all.
I’ve had to learn however, not everything that appears on my screen deserves a place in my spirit.
Happiness cannot survive where comparison lives unchecked.
Peace cannot grow where negativity is constantly watered.
So, one can ask simple questions when online:
- Does this uplift me?
- Does this inform me in a healthy way?
- Or does this leave me feeling less than, anxious, or overwhelmed?
And sometimes, the most joyful thing to do… is log off. Not forever. Just long enough to hear one’s own thoughts again. Because happiness is not found in keeping up—it is found in coming back to oneself.
A Lesson I Didn’t Know I Was Learning
My father lived 111 years. Think about that—but we had years of mornings conversations and stories of the past.
He wasn’t a man who rushed through life. He was particular—about how he dressed, how he treated people, how he showed up. There was a calm dignity about him, the kind that didn’t need attention to be real.
Looking back, I realize something: he understood stillness long before I ever tried to practice it.
He didn’t call it meditation.
He just lived it.
There was a peace in the way he moved and a quiet joy in the way he connected people—always wanting family to know each other, to feel close, to belong.
He taught me, without ever saying it out loud, that happiness doesn’t have to be chased.
Sometimes, it is carried.
Carry Happiness today!