Happiness is a state of mind

The best decision a human being can ever make is a decision to be happy, some wait for the right conditions or for the right moment, but the moment is now. The sooner you make that decision the better your life will be, the truth is there will never be the right moment to be happy, the moment where everything in life just clicks into place. It is sadly when you look back at your life that you realise how happy you were. Nostalgia is the worst kind of happiness, I looked at old pictures of Nairobi when I was a child and realised how happy I was, but at the time I was sulking because I wanted a BMX bike but all I got was a Raleigh Chopper. Nostalgia is happiness delayed, yes those days were nice, waking up on Saturday morning, He-Man on TV, playing my Dad’s old vinyl records while it rained outside. He’d tap the floor upstairs once if it was a good song and hammer incessantly if he hated the song. Then it would stop raining and we’d splash in the puddles, and away for a day of adventure through bushy trails and play hide and seek in a scrap yard. When we got back, we were hungry and attacked the fridge like hungry refugees. We were all refugees in some way, displaced from Byumba, Machakos, Nyeri or Stockholm, hearing our parents speaking in a strange language, and oblivious to the hard work it takes to have a comfortable lifestyle. Then you look back and realise you were the happiest you’ll ever be, ignorance is bliss and we were so ignorant, that was the cause of our happiness. Then reality came and ruined the party, reality is what you choose to see, what you choose to focus on, if you focus on the bad then you have misery, and vice versa. The Bible says “do not let your heart be troubled” meaning one has to let misery into their heart for it to take hold. It also tells you “to guard your heart for in it are the issues of life.” Any decision you make to focus on the bad will lead you to be miserable, any decision you make to focus on the good will make you happy. There is a saying that there is no such thing as a sad person just an ungrateful person, any person who is sad is not focussing on what they have to thank God for. Firstly you are alive, and if you look around there is at least one person who loves you, and there is a whole world waiting to know who you are, waiting to love you. The best decision I made in my life was to come back to Rwanda, my mother in UK came down to see me and was happy to see me settled. Every street I walked on I met someone and had a joyful conversation with, I was switching between colloquial Kinyarwanda laced with French, English, Lingala, Swahili, and Luganda all thrown in. I was so caught up in the moment until my mother said “Wow, you are really happy here!” I hadn’t noticed, but I agreed. Ends