What Gives Me the Right?

Do you ever wonder whether you deserve to be as happy as you want to be?  I do.  My problem is that I judge whether my past choices and mistakes earn me the right to be happy now.  What gives me the right?  Have I earned it?  I know I'm not alone here...

"I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends." ~ Walt Whitman

This may sound ridiculous to some people, but I believe that's just because the topic is happiness.  Think about it in other terms such as praise.  Have you ever received praise and just didn't feel you deserved it?  If so, what makes this different?  The difference is who bestows the recognition.  When someone else praises us, tells us we did a great job or are a great employee, we might blush and say we don't deserve it, but it feels good and we accept it.  Odds are we'll probably share it with someone later, too.  Someone else looked at us and made a determination that we deserved to feel good about ourselves.  That's the whole point of them sharing this praise.  They saw something good in us and made the decision to point it out.  Now, admit it...it felt great, didn't it?

What do you see when you look in the mirror?  Take a look and try to see the person looking back at you objectively.  Do you see mistakes and failures?  Yes.  Do you see struggle and conflict?  Sometimes.  Do you see good intentions and genuine potential?  Absolutely!  Despite all this, could you find something wonderful to say to the person you see?  Good.

We are our fiercest critics in life, aren't we?  In fact, I believe we are our biggest impediments in life, too.  We constantly get in out own way because we somehow feel the need to tie our happiness and success to an interpretation of what we feel we deserve.

"We cannot achieve more in life than what we believe in our heart of hearts we deserve to have." ~ James R. Ball

To break free of this practice we must first remove any such weight from our intentions and potential as well as our mistakes.  The burden of trying to legitimize our happiness falls not on finding reasons we don't deserve to be happy but rather recognizing the plethora of reasons we have the right to be happy.  No matter what your religion the fact remains that every single day we see a sunrise or sunset, smell a flower, hear someone laugh, taste our favorite food or feel an embrace is an absolute miracle.  We live a miracle every single day and the only way to appreciate a miracle is to smile and give thanks.  Try being unhappy with that mindset!

What gives me the right to be happy?  What gives me the right NOT to be happy?