happiness is a choice?

It's funny how there are things that you've heard so many times and you thought you know what it means, but the fact is that you never really absorb what it means until it happens to you.


The most recent one happened to me was about how happiness is a choice. Happiness is your choice. You choose whether you're going to be happy, or miserable, regardless the circumstances. I've heard about it so many times. And though it never really clear to me why and how, I've accepted it as the truth. I don't know how it would felt but I've accepted it as the way things should work.

And I have to say that I'm thankful to be able to actually experience the feeling. 


I've been under the weather for about a week, having bad cough and fever that goes up and down. Yesterday it got really bad; my body was felt like a shipwreck, my head was spinning, the cough was getting worse and it caused me headache. All I wanted to do was sleep on my bed. At home. But there I was at the office, facing the computer screen, doing my works. I wore a thick jacket with a hood, and carried a tumbler containing hot tea everywhere I go. Every now and then I put my head on my desk and closed my eyes, not really sleeping, just trying to ease myself.


What surprised me was that despite everything, I was feeling happy. I found myself dancing on my seat while typing words and numbers into the screen. I looked at the sky outside and it was black, a sign that heavy rain would come down. And if you know the traffic in Jakarta, you'd know that that shouldn't be a good sign. But I was feeling okay. I danced with the body that felt like a shipwreck, I sang with a cracked voice, with a prospect of having to spend no less than 2.5 hours in the road just to get home. 


That's when it hit me, that this is probably what it means when they said that happiness is a choice. 


I could choose to be unhappy that day. I had all the reasons I need to be unhappy for the rest of the day. I don't think I'd consciously made a decision to be happy but perhaps somehow I did. Because I couldn't see anything wrong with the day and I couldn't think of any other reasons why I shouldn't be happy. 


It's a choice you could choose. It's what you choose to feel, regardless the circumstances.


Being a person who carries clouds above her head, I'm sure that choosing to be happy is not an easy thing to do. It requires skill, and skill requires practice. But at least I now know what it really means, and I think that should be a good start :)