What is happiness? Is it waking up next to the person you love? Is it hearing the sound of your new car parked outside? Is it getting everything you want? Or is it all of this? Does happiness exist? And if so why is it so hard to find? Everyone wants to be happy but not many know how this is achieved. For me happiness truly comes from within. All the clothes, cars, diamonds and money in the world can’t make me happy. Maybe for that moment but after a while it all fades away and I just want something else, something better. Happiness to me is being satisfied with who I am and being able to except all my flaws. At the age of 15 it’s extremely hard almost impossible to truly know who you are, discovering yourself is really a lifelong process but you can have an understanding of who you are that day and to me that’s happiness. To wake up and be able to say “I may be having a bad hair day or my eyes are low, but I love myself anyway” now that’s happiness. To me happiness is listening to your favorite songs and crying because of the deep meanings they all convey, the sweet reminders that you have had some good and bad memories in your life but through them all you can say that you are a stronger, better person because of them. That’s what those songs tell me, anyway. Happiness is reading a book till 4 in the morning balling your eyes out because it is so relatable or just sad. Its spending hours in Barnes N’ Noble looking for the perfect book no matter what others think of it. Happiness is going through old pictures and seeing what life used to be like, how happy you were as a baby and how you were so special to everybody, how everybody was always smiling and at least looked like they were all so happy. But the true happiness is being able to look past those smiles and happy faces and realize that even though life seemed to be perfect when you were so little there were still problems and nothing was or ever will be perfect no matter how it seemed, and even though you’re not the center of attention anymore you can still say you are happy to have the most amazing people in your life, your family. Happiness is accepting the fact that not everyone is going to like you but at the end of the day you love everyone. As ironic as it may seem, it’s important to love everyone in the world no matter what. You can’t be truly happy if you can dislike/hate someone so bad it makes you angry, you’ll never be happy if that’s your attitude. There will always be someone in life you don’t like but you have to learn to like them, no matter how angry they may have made you in that moment you have to learn to move past it and pray for them. It’s knowing when and how to say sorry when you’ve done something wrong and never doing it again so you never have to see that person hurt again. Happiness is knowing how to be a great friend, its laughing when it’s appropriate, at their foolish mistakes and listening to their problems without judging them, having pointless conversations, standing up for them every time it’s necessary, and being there for them always. Being able to pride yourself with the fact that you are a great friend is pure happiness. Happiness is the smell of rain pouring down from the sky, no matter how much of a cliché it may be, it makes me truly happy.