Day Two of Heena’s Quote Challenge  continues with my focus on the nature of happiness.

This was to be my Day 3 Challenge but unfortunately WP is playing up on me and has lost my Day 2 Challenge post – hence bringing this forward a day…. quite fitting as I am now not too chuffed…… and searching vainly for my original Day 2 post!

Today I am considering the illusive, and paradoxical nature of happiness.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“There is not love of life without despair about life.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

― Albert Camus

There is something quite fascinating about the above photo that I found on Pixabay. It would make a wonderful prompt for a story. It makes you ponder why the girl is in such a sorrowful pose, with her head hanging, and a cigarette poised in the air. The shadows and lit pathway ahead suggest possibilities, the foreground is all bright, and yellow like her jeans. Perhaps she has had terrible news. Life is not all happy days, there are good and bad moments, and true happiness can sometimes allude us. Recently I heard a very sad story from my mother about the grandmother of a young man who died of a heart attack at age eighteen, such a shock to his family, and friends. This goes against all our expectations – how can a seemingly fit young man die before his grandmother? How does one cope with such grief? The very thought of it makes me shudder. How can we accept such loss, and what does it say about the meaning of life?

Life is too short. For some it is bitterly short.  So perhaps we shouldn’t search for happiness as if it is a goal to  be achieved. Instead, just be. Happiness is not a quality that you can capture, it is a state of being that you experience first hand without hardly noticing. So rather than searching down endless pathways looking for the things that make us happy perhaps it’s better to live in the moment, treasure those seconds, minutes, and hours of pleasure spent in the company of much loved family and friends, store them up and keep them for a rainy day when you might just need them.

RULES OF THIS CHALLENGE:

1. Post three consecutive days
2. You can pick one or three quotes per day
3. Challenge three different bloggers per day

MY THREE NOMINEES FOR TODAY ARE:

Ameena @ https://randomsbyarandom.wordpress.com/

Charley @ https://booksandbakes1.wordpress.com/

Kayleigh @ https://kayleighm8.wordpress.com/

Here is the link to Heena’s Challenge. Do visit her lovely blog:

http://heenarathorep.com/2016/02/27/quotes-challenge-2/

If only we could all find that special moment of happiness and hold it in our hearts forever… negating all the other crappy things that happen..

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx