Living a Happy Life

Today, my husband and I celebrated our 28th Wedding Anniversary.  The whole day was spent walking down memory lane through BYU campus, (kissing in front of the dormitory we got engaged at), driving around to the various apartments we lived in, looking for familiarity of the old days.  Sadly, there are no more Navajo Tacos at the Cougar Eat.  And no more Grasshoppers at the Bowling Alley, (but they do have a Volcano that was a pretty good replacement).  Things have definitely changed, and continue to do so.  I never thought I would get to the age of “looking back at the old days”, but here I am.

As we reminisced about our life together, we remembered our innocence and dreams for the future.  We thought we knew a lot back then and maybe we knew a few things, but we could never second guess the path we ended up taking.  What if we had never met, what if I had not accepted his proposal, what if we had made other decisions…where would our lives have taken us?  The “what ifs” are more frightening now than anything we could have imagined for our future back then.

Life can’t be second guessed;  life can’t be feared.  Life must be lived, and it is best to live it boldly.  Stephen asked me if I felt I had lived a happy life so far.  I had to think about it.  My answer was, “Not as happy as I should have felt.   I have had a good life in spite of its ups and downs.  Sometimes I haven’t let myself be as happy as I should have felt.  My limited vision sometimes distorted what could have still passed for happiness.  Attitude is a very big deal when it comes to life.

I’ve seen what anger and regret can do to a person.  It makes them old before their time.  It makes them unpleasant company.  They are unhappy and a dark cloud literally follows them around.  Life was never meant to be easy, but we were still meant to find the joy in it.
So… I ask you.  Have you lived a happy life so far?