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At 32, I’ve realized that happiness is not anchored on health, career, on money, or on people. It is actually a little of everything plus the most important thing — appreciation of life’s blessings, no matter how small or sometimes, meaningless.

I’ve seen people with money but still fighting or putting down other people for more money. I won’t exactly call them happy, probably greedy or…. a little greedy. There are people however who are on top of their career — popular and prestigious — but hardly find time doing the things that would make them happy. What’s ironic is this, there are people on the verge of dying or with serious illnesses but learning and trying to enjoy their life while they can but there are also healthy people who find no meaning in their life and does not appreciate that life itself is already a blessing.

At times, happiness is associated with love. Some people think that when you’re in-love, you’re probably happy. In truth, there are more pains you’re bound to experience when you’re in-love than when you are not. Others don’t even get past the stage of hurting while being in-love which at times can be destructive.

I remember years back when I fell in love with a “boy-next-door” type, I felt so insecure with my own personality and my physical appearance that I tried so hard to change it so he’ll be pleased. Since I was a full-figured woman, I decided to go on a diet, I wanted badly to buy my own treadmill but since I can’t afford it, I decided to not just cut my food intake but also, to turn into a bulimic. Being in-love does that to us and I was not proud of what I did for love but I am proud of what I learned from it.

At 32, life already taught me a lot of things. Traversing life is a journey that made me the kind of person I am today, totally far from being perfect but definitely wiser and I hope, better. It was a long and hard journey to actually blossom into a woman from being a girl. To actually understand how life works so you’d learn to enjoy the ride no matter how bumpy or boring or tiring it sometimes get. To learn how to truly love yourself so you’d be able to share love with others and serve as a gift to them they would treasure forever.

The most important thing is for us to count our blessings so we would wake up each day feeling blessed and happy whether or not you have money or you just lost your job or there’s no food on the table yet. We feel what we wanted to feel and we become what we wanted to become. We just have to work hard on keeping our dreams alive and even work harder to be happy with our life. Being happy is a state of mind and it’s up to us to get to that state.

This morning, I have decided to smile and greet the world with glee. It doesn’t matter that the other night, my life was quite a mess. It doesn’t matter that there are bills to pay and even more debts to worry about. There are so many wonderful things to be thankful about, among them is my still being here to work on my life some more. I have decided that today, I would be again a gift to myself and most especially, a gift to those I love and those who wanted to know me as a person. And I sincerely pray that the “mighty guy” up there would allow me to be that kind of person, that kind of “present” today and everyday of my life.

Smile some more today and you’d feel happier and luckier to be alive.

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