Is happiness a choice?

I read a magazine article yesterday that debated whether or not you can 'choose' to be happy. The arguments for and against were very polarised, and as usual, I found myself agreeing with both and neither at the same time.

You might not be able to 'choose' to avoid situations and events that will make you unhappy - or rather you can, but you will not be actually happy if you have just opted to ignore the problems that won't go away. Self-delusion is normal and necessary for us to stay sane but there must be a limit to how far you can or should trick yourself. If you let it go too far you end up hurting both yourself and the people around you.

Happiness, or perhaps to say sadness, is something that depends greatly on events that happen in your life, when there is illness and bereavement and stress it's very hard to be happy. And understandable if you aren't happy. If you think about a large proportion of the world, there is so much to be UNhappy about, people who have to worry about food, shelter, political unrest, abuse, the list goes on. For those of us who are much more fortunate we worry about illness, work, money, family and friends. The issues may appear to be of different scales but that doesn't mean that these problems aren't just as REAL to each of us. Or, for that matter, that these problems aren't important.

So your own happiness is something that you have no control over? How depressing.

But I believe that to some extent you can make a choice. Not whether you are happy or not, because that feeling of joy bubbling up inside you is something that comes when you aren't thinking about it. But you can actively choose how to deal with problems, choose to some extent how far you let yourself become upset over a situation. As a simple example, many of my friends have been considering career changes recently. Some of them complain a lot about their current job and say how unhappy they are, but they focus so much on this negative side that they don't gather the energy to really look for a new job. They become depressed and easily discouraged by every set-back they encounter. Others have bitten the bullet and spent a lot of time on their applications and preparation for interviews, and kept going even when the rejection letters have kept coming back. The difference in energy and sense of purpose is so evident even when I've been on the other side of a telephone being updated by what has (or hasn't) been happening in their lives.

Although we cannot control events that happen around us, nor predict what may happen next, perhaps we can try and stay optimistic and look for the silver lining to keep us going. Although how easy or difficult it is to do this depends a lot on your personality, that doesn't mean that we can't change. Maybe instead of always striving for happiness, we should strive for contentment and satisfaction in what we can achieve, without being complacent. Then with a calm and welcoming heart we might be able to experience the streaks of colourful emotion that can strike every now and then, and with any luck might be true happiness.