Life and the Pursuit of Whatever You Want

Recently, I was speaking with a friend about choosing your own happiness. The phrase "you choose your own happiness" is easier said than done. When my friend told me this phrase annoyed her, I had to agree. I thought if anyone said that to me face-to-face I'd probably punch them and say, "that makes me happy".

In all seriousness, though, choosing your own happiness can be done, but it is hard to do. With every choice, or action, there is a consequence, or reaction. The majority of the time the consequence is out of our control. Therefore, we may take the necessary actions to make ourselves happy, but its the consequences that have affected our environment including the people that can make us unhappy. It is not to say that every outcome from our actions is not good, but it needs to be recognized that we cannot always choose what happens to us even if we make our own (generally accepted standard of good)choices.

Now here comes the other part we can control (besides our actions): our reaction to the outcome. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said: "It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop." Our reaction to adversity is very important because it is how we handle the consequences of our actions (or other adversity) that determines our happiness.

It probably seems like I should punch myself now, but I will add that controlling our reaction to adversity is hard. So when people say it so easily that we choose our own happiness, well it makes me a little annoyed. There is one more thing to this as well. Pursuing what we want, whatever it may be (I say this with the thought in my mind that everyone is trying to pursue something to the extent of a generally accepted standard of good), can make us happy.

I read an article on Yahoo! that spoke about a woman who was receiving an onslaught of threats and negative tweets because of an article she wrote about her dislike for young mothers. The link will be at the bottom of this post. Though I'd like to agree with some of the negative tweets, I have to say what does it matter? The woman who wrote the article and young mothers out there have all made a choice to live their lives how they want. If we have any right left it is that we choose to pursue whatever we would like to. So what good does it do anyone putting down on someone else's choices? From what I have seen it does not do any good.

So as far as my opinion goes, you have the right to pursue happiness, but please do not put down on someone else's path to happiness.

Link to Yahoo! article: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/blogger-slams-motherhood--gets-death-threats--here-we-go-again--210630664.html