My primary goal with this project was to be vulnerable. I figured that the best way I could do it would be through just telling a segment of my life that I don’t usually share with anyone. I’ve been pursuing my dreams in a way that I was always afraid to do before. I’m a lot happier than I’ve ever been.
For a long time, my belief has been that everyone deserves to be happy, but I find it strange how we sometimes exclude ourselves from that “everyone.” Sometimes we’re envious of another person’s happiness. It just feels petty to me, or to be a bit more charitable, it’s just a lack of understanding. I recognize that life can be hard, and you can’t always be happy. I’ve been through long periods of time where I wasn’t happy, so I’m empathetic towards those situations. But regardless of where you’re at, you deserve to be just as happy as that person who you’re grumbling about.
That thought, that everyone deserves to be happy, is about the only thing that I could testify about in a fast and testimony meeting with my whole soul. There are a lot of things that I don’t know, and a lot of things that I’m still building faith in, but I do believe that we have the chance to constantly improve and be happy. I think that happiness is less of a state of being, and more of a lifestyle. It’s not an easy one, but I do think that it’s worth the efforts that go into triumphing over our difficulties. Like Brown said in her TED talk, “You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
With this project, I wanted to share my own recent journey to happiness. I don’t intend for it to be a cry for sympathy; it’s a little late for that in my story. I just wanted to be matter of fact and show how I learned to be happy, and reemphasize that everyone around us, you included, deserves to be happy.
I think the primary shortcoming in my project is that of the time limit constraint. I recognize that happiness isn’t just a switch that we can flip, and I also recognize that other people can have a huge impact on our personal abilities to be happy. With four minutes, I don’t think I did justice to the nuances there. Other people can do horrible things that strongly impact us, and on the flip side, people can make huge differences in our lives. We don’t live in a vacuum where nothing can affect us. But I think we can also give other people too much credit. We have a lot of power to choose positive attitudes, which is really the main feeling I hope I present adequately.
