This I Believe: The Lights of Happiness

Having been raised the larger part of my life in a country where cars and candies were the commodities of only the rich and a place where life just wasn’t fair, I see happiness through different lighting. My mother worked full time, went to school full time, and raised me full time to earn a doctorate degree and a good name, both weighed equally in Uzbekistan, only to have her business ripped right from under her feet. Still, she remained happy. She packed up everything she owned into a small, cherry red suitcase with a few hundred dollars in her hand, no English in her head, but a whole mountain of determination in her heart. My mother came to the United States to make her dreams come true for me, her only son. After opening her own restaurant and bringing me to this new world, I saw a true deep happiness I had never seen before.

Given my personal experiences, I believe in two types of happiness: one that is found and one that is made. In discussing the former, I think back to Christmas mornings when I was little, finding that orange in my stocking and tasting the sweetest, juiciest fruit that would make me dance around the house with a special kind of skip in my step. When I first came to America and saw all the wonderful games and clothes that were once a figment of my dreams now physically at the tips of my fingers. This kind of happiness is always present and happens upon us in moments that we reflect back on as fond bright memories. They span from the joy of the first snow and seeing the ocean for the first time to falling for that perfect someone. This happiness that is found is light, cheerful, bright, and exciting like an overwhelming flood of emotion.