Our society places a disproportionate emphasis on happiness. Capitalism thrives on it. Advertisements leverage it. Self-improvement promises it. We think we must be doing something wrong if we haven’t obtained it. You’ve probably even heard parents say it: “I just want my kids to be happy.”

We equate happiness with fulfillment, with discipline, with success and prosperity. If one doesn’t grow up to be “happy”, then one should reconsider their life choices and “make a change,” because arriving at the doorstep of happiness eventually is better than never arriving at all. But what if the goal was never supposed to be happiness?

What if a day spent being sad, or one spent grieving, lamenting, or simply melancholy, is not bad but instead just one part of the beautiful spectrum that makes up the human experience? What if a life well-lived is not one firmly nailed to the door of happiness, but one in which we fully engage life exactly where we are, no matter what it throws at us?