Everyday Canvas

Happiness and Weather

Prompt: Playwright Anton Chekkov said, "People don't notice whether it is winter or summer if they are happy." Do you agree with him? Why or Why not? Would you say you are happier during the summer than other seasons? Why or Why not?

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Happiness is an inner affair. I don’t think it has much to do with the weather. Anyhow, where I live, I am not too crazy about the summers, but I am just as happy as I always am, provided the other factors that are important to me in my life are intact.

In addition, happiness has to be defined before one can pass judgment on it. I think what happiness is depends on each person’s wants and needs. It may mean sudden delirium of delight to some, for example. To others it may mean monetary wealth, and still to some, it may mean spiritual wealth. To me, it is spiritual wealth plus accepting and valuing the status quo plus contentment with the family and the people I love. Marcel Proust said: ““Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” He was so right.

Furthermore, even when we know exactly what happiness is for us, searching for it usually negates the meaning of it. The only thing we can do could be to make ourselves ready to receive it. Then, when happiness comes, we recognize it and meet it with open arms.

Happiness, even when found, can float away with internal or external reasons, which may mean that it is not a constant state either. If it were, Sylvia Plath--who said, “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery: air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy’”---would have stayed in that happy mindset without falling into depression and would want to live much longer than she did.

Coming back to weather, it only makes us only comfortable or uncomfortable. Attaching happiness to it can be limiting one’s options in life.