I think a lot of it comes down to perceptions... the divide between happiness and sadness and fairness, basically life isn’t fair and people don’t always get what they deserve, good or bad. Everyone has their own idea of what is important to make them happy- and everyone has their own dreams about what they want for their future, and the truth is we don’t all get it. Some people have the things that you might want, but then they have their own list of other stuff they want for themselves. Also someone might look at things in your life and be like ‘OMIGOD IIII want THAT’ But to you its just something normal.

Does that make sense?????

There are stories all the time of good people having horrible things happen to them, and awful people who just cruise through life, and it seems wrong. But you know what, deeper beneath the surface, the nice people who have horrible stuff happen to them, probably use that experience to better themselves even more, and the horrible people who seem to have a perfect life are probably sad about something we couldn’t even comprehend!! And also I think that back to the perception of things, what someone sees as horrible might not be so bad as what the person going through it thinks. Like with the people in third world countires.. it may sound harsh, but we see them through our eyes and compare their situation to our lives as we know it- for them- they don’t know any different. They may be perfectly happy with what they have, all their boxes may be ticked, we just have different boxes.

For you personally though, with your list, it’s putting a lot of pressure to get the things to "be happy" does it mean you cant be happy til you get them?? What if you get them and then your still not happy???? Would you rather be "happy" that your kids have the opportunity to go to UNI, but its ok if they don’t want to. Can you be happy that you’re comfortable in a rented home, rather than struggling to OWN one? Can you be happy that you are open to meeting someone rather than feeling the pressure of analysing whether every person you meet may or may not be THE ONE???

Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh... but i kind of think in your post you kind of answered your own question, stuff happens, we have some control to how we react to things, but you could meet "the one" and then be hit by a bus, and you wasted all that "waiting" time being un happy. Be happy within yourself, and the other things will fall into place, how ever they fall.

Sorry if this ramble is all over the place tantrumming 2yr old today making it hard to think....

This kind of thought really gets me thinking about the whole "what happens when we die thing" coz that would make it easier for me to accept things if i could rationally say ok, this happened to so and so because of this, and now that they have gone through this experience they will reap this reward later.. but the truth is we just dont know. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing- but what I take from it- is that we don’t know- we don’t know if this life contributes to the next other than what lessons we pass on to our kids. And so I think we can only live in the moment and find happiness in the simplest of things. Maybe thats how its supposed to be- so that everything we do is authentic and to keep us on our toes. If we knew that it was all for nothing we would most likely all go run a riot and it would be chaos. And if we knew for sure that there were huge consequences, we would be able to enjoy the here and now because we would be too focussed on "the next life"....

Ok, now i have rambled too much!!!

In saying that I would be “happy” to win millions of dollars so I don’t have to stress about money and in my illusion I would never have a problem again in my life- but deep down I know that’s not true, life would still throw me a curve ball, and I’m not going to be unhappy until I win my millions, coz what if it never happens??????? I would be unhappy forever!!!