Happy New Year! As we begin a new cycle, and start banging out a long list of unreasonable resolutions and stressful expectations, let us stop and have a little #TBT fun, by grooving to Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness.”

This song gets me. Right in the soft spots. It makes me want to move my hips. It’s sexy and it speaks to that inner longing within us all…. That ever-elusive Pursuit of Happiness…. A belief most of us have because “I’ll be fine…once I get it.”

But what if that wasn’t the truth? Hold up, what?!

Stay with me. What if Happiness wasn’t a pursuit, an unreachable material thing that we strive for never to fully grasp…? But instead, Happiness consisted of moments. Little bits of joy. Bite size pieces of pure ecstasy.

Let me break it down for you. Children are the purest source. They aren’t tainted by the reality of life’s stresses just yet. You look at them and their wide eyes are filled with wonder. They know pure joy, freedom, pleasure, unbridled enthusiasm…. And yet, they can also stomp their feet, and throw a temper tantrum if they don’t get their MumMum cracker soon enough.

That’s the reality yo. Not even the purest little innocent baby can uphold happiness all day long. They crash. They need to eat, sleep and rejuvenate just like the rest of us.

We have all these thoughts, feelings, emotions, because we are human. The point isn’t to get rid of the ones we don’t like or bury them inside us, striving only for the good. As I’ve discovered the hard way, that is impossible… and will lead to a lifelong unfulfilled pursuit indeed.

Duality is a part of living. Good and Bad. Right and Wrong. Light and Dark. We cannot have one without the other. Two halves make up the whole. That is balance. That is the symmetrical perfection of life.

Life is cyclical. There are 12 months, 365 days in a year. 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes in an hour. 60 seconds in a minute. And every New Year’s Day begins again on January 1^st.  We do it over and over again. This is guaranteed.

This year, instead of striving for that unattainable place of perfection aka happiness, what if we become okay with all the feelings; grateful that we have feelings at all? Humbled that we are alive and able to plant our feet on this beautiful, incredible, sacred earth about to embark on yet another blessed year?

Instead of putting big resolution pressures on ourselves, what about making a vow to be gentle on ourselves, even when we forget to be gentle on ourselves. To love ourselves and each other a little bit more every day. And to just be present to this new cycle and see ourselves more clearly than we did the year before?

To find gratitude in the little things: A smile from a stranger, sun on our face, fresh water, warm hugs… That is where the happiness lies. In appreciating what we have. Not what we don’t.

As a fellow seeker, I say to you on this holy New Year’s Day, here’s to a lifetime of little moments of happiness, joy, wonder, enthusiasm, and temper tantrums over MumMums. Feel the feels. All of it. That’s a gift in itself.

Ever forward my friends… and Happy Blessed New Year!

Love & Light,