When the journey begins we find ourselves in search of something to fill the emptiness in our lives, the road most traveled leads us all in an anxious pursuit of happiness. Regardless of the beauty, pursuing happiness can put us on in a rat race in life. We reach for things that seem to bring happiness, only to find it’s just a mirage of what our imaginations portrayed.

Whether we believe happiness is a job promotion, more money, a bigger car, or a new dress, many of us continue to search only to find that it’s not what we imagined it to be. That’s our goal, right? True happiness? - we strive to reach happiness every single day. Some touch it, and it moves away; some dream about it, only to wake up and realize it wasn’t really there.

Many times we run the rat race only to reach what we once thought was happiness - we’re out of breath, exhausted from the efforts and suddenly realize that we actually left true happiness behind us, so we run back only to find it gone. It’s like a huge cycle of running, as if time were running out and we must find it before our journey ends. There are times we’re so busy looking for true happiness that we walk right past it, or so anxious to find it, we miss the mark of what it’s all about.

If we could jump off the cycle and watch the world running the rat race in pursuit of happiness, we would realize that true happiness is in our own hearts, around the people we love, and the things that make us smile. The problem is, we sometimes get bored, we watch others smile, and suddenly - we believe they have true happiness, and we want it! So, we’re off again - running the rat race, trying to get ahead of others, because if we’d just “make it there”, we believe we’ll forever be happy! But, where does the journey end, and what happens when the next person smiles? If we could jump off the cycle and watch as the world anxiously runs the race, we may realize that what we are in pursuit of is already with us - in our hearts, and we don’t have to follow another person’s lead to get it.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing happiness, but by thinking our true happiness lies within another persons life, the rat race will never end. Once we realize that happiness is within us, our journey to find it has ended.