Yes, your happiness is not dependent upon what goes on in life. It is hard to believe that. You grew up thinking that your happiness is absolutely dependent upon what goes on in life. You were taught cause and effect. You were taught reward and punishment. Be good, and this will happen. Be naughty, and that will happen. You were taught that as well as the day follows the sun.
You were taught sequence. You were taught consequence. You were taught time. You were taught one thing follows another or leads to another. How can you argue the fact that, if you put your finger on the hot stove, your finger will feel the heat?
There are other matters you can argue, however. Those who do good deeds can become ill or poor or anything at all. They can wish they had done more good, and they can die young. Those who perform bad deeds can live a long healthy wealthy life without a qualm about their choices. The innocent can suffer. All are innocent, beloveds.
You may not have known that you are supposed to be happy. You have been taught, if only by example, that you are to suffer, and the more you suffer, the more noteworthy you are. You may have learned that to suffer is noble and to be happy is frivolous. Often, what you have not been taught is wiser than what you have been taught. Take everything you have learned with a grain of salt.
So, now, here We are, and, once again, I say you can be happy regardless of circumstances. You can be happy no matter what is going on or not going on.
If you had grown up with the idea that it is right and natural for you to be happy, the odds are that you would be happier right now. Innocently, you followed the crowd. Innocently, you counted all the ways to be unhappy. You became a virtuoso of unhappiness and displeasure. You became a great faultfinder with yourself, the world, everyone and everything. You became the town crier who pointed out what should be different from what it is and how ignoble what is. Just about everything should be a different way. Everything should be the new better bigger improved model, what a shame things are as they are. Tut tut.
Write a new script for yourself. You don’t have to love everything as it is, and you also don’t have to decry it.
It is as if you are sailing on a blue sparkling ocean. “But look at the shore,” you say. “It is not blue sparkling ocean. It is shore.” Logically, you might say, “Land should be ocean too.” Or you might say, “The ocean shouldn’t have such big waves. And look at all the fish and seaweed. Look how salty it is.”
Land and sea are both good.
Unquestionably, there are actions in life you prefer. There is a consensus that health is better than illness. Yet not everyone honors health. Everyone seems to take illness seriously and give it great respect. What if health were honored and illness were not taken so seriously. After all, you were taught to think one way and not another.
What if what you disfavor did not regulate your life? What if nothing in the world had a say over what you thought? What if you had your own perspective rather than a packaged one? What could not be?
There would be no circumstances under which you would have to decide that you are unhappy. Then you could be happy anyway.