Member-only story
What If I Told You That I Can Give You Happiness…
…but you can’t take it
I can attribute that quote to a conversation I had with the great Danelly Rodriguez. You might not know who he is yet, but give him some time.
This conversation was formative to the way I conceptualize happiness.
We were (in my case I still am) kids waxing poetic and trying our best to make sense of the world. We wanted to talk about what it means to be happy, and how we could make other people happy.
It’s infectious. It spreads like a plague. We get caught up in it. I love playing with it because it’s not only infectious from the inside out, or the outside in, happiness can simply manifest.
It can start from a simple joke to a store clerk — even when you’re in a bad mood, if it gets them smiling, you’re at risk to start smiling too. It’s not up to you to determine if you should start smiling, your brain, your body, your hormones, your being — these will decide for you.
Happiness doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to me. All I can do with mine is embrace it for the time that I have it, and share it with you.
Whether you embrace it, is not up to how much you want it. You can’t force it. We can only embrace it when it comes — or reject it.
