I’ve been thinking about people that aren’t happy lately.

I know, I know, there are a lot of them. I mean shoot there are times when I’m not necessarily leaping for joy myself. I’m not talking about people that simply have moments of unhappiness but people that truly don’t experience joy on any regular basis. If I go through my day without experiencing some period of joy, happiness, satisfaction, elation, or other splendiferous emotion then I would say it was a crappy day.

So yeah, people that are unhappy.

I would have to say one of the major reasons (and this writing is not by any means trying define all of them) would have to be a sense of not doing what you know you should be doing.

There are two examples that come to mind:
I think we all know people who have passions, gifts, talents or whatever that are going completely unused or pursued. Deep within these people is this ember that’s burning and for whatever reason it’s being doused and not stoked. Maybe the passion doesn’t line up with societal norms. I mean who goes against what society says you should do? Visionaries? Please. All those people ever do is change the world.
Maybe the gifting or talent doesn’t make economical sense. I mean why do what you love when you can tolerate what you hate and make more money? Often times these are the 40 year old women staring blankly from behind the customer service desk or the engineer (true story) who makes a ton of money but wishes desperately he could lead backwoods hikes.

The other example. People who have tasted more but rationalized, doubted, and ignored their way back down. To steal an overused example from the Matrix - they took the red pill. They got a glimpse of really living life but decided it was easier living in apathetic, ignorant bliss. The best real world example I can come up with at 12:03am is people who have experienced the real truth of a relationship with God…and turned away. Some (not all) of the most unhappy people I’ve ever met are what Christians call backslidden. It’s a stupid phrase but then again the term Christian isn’t so great either. Another topic for another umm morning. I’ve often thought, (yes often) “What if I walked away? What if I took this Faith thing that I’m living out and said it was crap?” I would simply be the unhappiest person you know. It’s to late for me to turn back, I know too much to pretend it’s not real.

The real key with both of these things is this: Take what you love to do, couple it with someone who will always love you no matter what (mmm like God) and you will be happy.

The end and goodnight.