What Do You Want?

What Do You Want?

“I want to have fun. I want to shine like the sun. I want to be the one that you want to see. I want to knit you a sweater. I want to write you a love letter. I want to make you feel better. I want to make you feel free.”
~ Joni Mitchell

What do you want? A good friend of mine claims this is a question that cannot be answered. Well that just gets me all worked up – an unanswerable question?! Impossible. I’d like to hear your answer, but first I’ll share mine.

I want to be happy. It all boils down to that for me. I write because it is my passion to write and when I write, I feel happy. I do this blog because it brings me joy on so many levels; the interactions, the learning, the relationship building, the writing, the overcoming of challenges. It all makes me happy. I do Reiki healing work because it helps people and that makes me happy. I wonder if there is any other motive than this; happiness.

We may be volunteering for a charity event, claiming to be doing it out of a generous heart (and this can be true) but seeing ourselves as generous makes us happy. We may take over someone’s chores when they are ill, or make hospital visits when we hate hospitals, but doing the right thing makes us happy. We may not enjoy shoveling the driveway or house-cleaning but we do it anyway because we know that when it’s done…. say it with me….we’ll be happy. Sometimes happiness is a delayed-action event, sometimes it’s immediate like when you’re eating dark chocolate, or tobogganing at super-speed down a snowy hill, but I’m beginning to wonder if all roads don’t lead to the same place.

Is happiness the bottom-line motivator of our lives? We may object and claim something else is, say comfort, but doesn’t it make us happy to be comfortable? Maybe the confusion is in how we define happiness; joy, peace, assurance, comfort, success, attention, or awareness. Wait a minute! Are these words a definition or a source of happiness. Or both. Do we do what we do because we believe the doing of it will bring us our own brand of happiness?

What are your thoughts? Do you know what you really want in life? What makes you happy?

photo credit: Bahman

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About The Author


I have always loved writing and community building. I’ve written a book about healing and happiness, The Happy Place, as well as a Community Building book, Sounding the Drum: Community Building in the Digital Age,both available at any Amazon store. I’ve been through life changes that I thought were the end of my world, but I’m still here. You never know what will happen next. Isn’t that what makes life interesting?