After reading How To Be Happy, several sisters in the community have contacted me (after “failing” at being happy) and asked me if happiness is really for them.
I provide the same answer for everyone:
Yes. Happiness is for you.
Yes. Happiness is for everyone.
I feel confident in this assertion for one solid reason. Here it is:
That which is created follows its Creator.
Humanity is the image and likeness of God. God is The Great I AM. He is integrated wholeness. God includes happiness as an aspect and product of Being…which is energetic existence. If you are a member of humanity, which is created by, for, and as God, then happiness is also an aspect and product of your being, your energetic existence. You can be happy. You have the inherent ability to be happy. You are built for happiness, whether you practice it or not.
My guess is you may be saying, “If that’s true, then why am I SO NOT happy??”
Am I right?
Ok. To figure it out, let’s talk about failure.
Some sisters (and brothers, and them) think they’ve failed at happiness. They think they’re not cut out to practice or consistently experience it. To them, failure means losing patience, losing one’s temper, losing focus, missing a practice period, missing a moment, missing a person, place, or thing.
I understand how this equation [losing patience +/_ missing a moment = failure] can be drawn. It seems sensible. However, it isn’t. It’s just not. This is flawed thinking. This flawed thinking comes from unhealed terror in your soul and body.
To understand why this flawed thinking is flawed, think of a baby.
Think of your own child, your godchild, your grandchild, a niece, nephew, or neighbor…it might even be an infant in a movie or on TV.
Think of the baby learning to walk. It’s funny to imagine. Newly walking babies look awkward, wobbly, and clumsy. They also look a little tense when they’re taking their first steps. They fall a lot. They bump into things. They knock things over. They trip, re-balance, and then fall anyway. Sometimes they pout a little. Other times they cry out of frustration. Sometimes they laugh at themselves. Occasionally, they take breaks and re-visit (for a little while) what they know how to easily do: crawl.
Yet, none of this constitutes failure.
It’s all a part of the process of learning to walk.
The same is true of learning anything, especially how to be happy.
Babies don’t quit when any of their stumbles, rumbles, and tumbles happen. This non-quitting is why you don’t see able-bodied adolescents being carried around by their 50 and 60-year-old parents.
Nope. Babies keep practicing. They keep working at it. They get comfortable with the discomfort and forge ahead.
Why?
Because they want to be big and they want to go places.
Babies have a deep desire to run around freely and independently, like big kids. They want to explore and break out of what’s “normal” for them. They want to walk to tables, pull up chairs, and sit with adults. They want to talk about big people topics. They want to play the new games, the more challenging ones they see their older siblings, friends, cousins, and neighbors playing. They want these adventures and pleasures and their instincts tell them it’s right for them to have them.
So, they go for it. They keep going until they figure it out for themselves. They keep learning the process, through trial and error. They practice, take breaks, and practice some more.
Walking is for babies just like happiness is for you.
You’re not failing when you fall. You’re learning (if you pay attention). You’re growing (if you stretch and move).
For many of us, learning to be happy will take some effort and time. It did for me. It’s a matter of physics, actually (power = work/time).
So, don’t quit when you fall (falling is not failure).
Don’t stop when you stumble (stumbling is not stalling).
Go back to the How To Be Happy blog and read it again. Get comfortable with happiness. It’s happenstance that you can make, enjoy, and embody. Learn to see yourself as happy…however pure, unadulterated, true, happiness looks to you.
Yes. Happiness is for you.
Yes. Happiness is for everyone.
Don’t let anyone take that away from you.
You can be a Supreme Lover too.
If you want to learn more about Supreme Love and your Lover Identity, take #LoverID Quiz I and #LoverID Quiz II. Then, be in touch. I am here to serve women in anchored ascendency → which means to get really grounded in Truth and rise really high in Power, at the same time. It’s everything you need.
Jeanine Staples is Associate Professor of Literacy and Language & African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her book, The Revelations of Asher: Toward Supreme Love in Self, is an endarkened, feminist, new literacies event (Peter Lang, spring 2016). In it, she explores Black women’s terror in love. She produces research-based courses and methodologies that enable marginalized girls and women to realize internal revelations that fuel external revolutions.
Dr. Staples’ next book details the evolution of her acclaimed undergraduate course, The Philadelphia Urban Seminar. In it, she explores Supreme Love in schools. She shows how she generates curriculum and methodologies that incite anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ableist pedagogical stances among teachers interested in urban education and equity for all people in schools and society.