Happiness means being you and not hiding

Happy means being you

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it. ~ Frank Zappa

Originally posted September, 2013

The seeds of thoughts for these pieces come at interesting times and often I don’t see a connection to where they came from until I sit down to write them, and sometimes not even then. This morning however the connection is fairly obvious to me as it’s a realization I’ve been having over the last few months, more accurately something I’m realizing once again. That realization is I think, a pretty fundamental one, the more genuine you are the happier you will be. Ok, so Rev Kane goes for a Duh realization today. However in my experience, the greatest discoveries you make about yourself are the ones that really should have been pretty obvious but we overlooked them.

The times I feel at my best, low-levels of stress, higher levels of energy and generally more happy are the times I’m being me and not playing one of the many roles in my life. We all have these roles, we play mommy or daddy, we play employee, we play proper citizen and all of these roles generally have one thing in common. We are performing in such a way as to conform to the expectations of others. You “act” like a parent in given situations because people will talk if you don’t. You wear the appropriate clothes, tone down your language and let people who are unkind to us off the hook, why? Because supposedly that’s what a good employee does. We dress a certain ways, act certain ways mostly because we don’t want to be singled out, or talked about, or judged by others. In the end this makes us more sheep than people.

Happiness is being you, being unique

I’m here to tell you today friends that all of that acting and costuming does more harm than good. I’m not saying you can absolutely flout the rules and laws of society or your community with impunity, there will be consequences. And there are good things to conform to; we don’t want people murdering everyone who cuts them off in traffic. But who are you? If you hate crowds and social gatherings you don’t have to attend every work social event. You don’t always have to hold your tongue. Express your personal style in the way you speak, act and dress, be open about what you think and believe. To me, the only rules in all of this are don’t act in ways that hurt others or inhibit the rights of others to express their own personal style. The closer you get to being YOU all of the time, the happier you will be.

Like everything though, there will be consequences, people will interact with you differently, you will be singled out a bit, you’ll be judged but fundamentally it’s ok for you to be you, the judgments of others are not as relevant as you being, loving and most of all accepting who you are. So, go out today and be you and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane