Without purpose, there is no true happiness or success

Happiness is not something that can be pursued. Rather it is that which is found when we are at peace with ourselves and with the world. Happiness is not measured by material gain or loss. Not by power or lack thereof. Not by privilege or poverty.
Happiness just is. It can not be measured. Contained or contemplated for too long because once we think it, we lose it to our subconscious. Because we begin to overanalyse the state we are in. We try to find out why we are happy in the moment rather than being happy all the time. Trying too hard to contain it rather than glory in it.
Happiness comes when we least expect it. When we let go of all expectation and reason. It comes when we sit and contemplate the rain. When we listen to the birds. When we accept we are one in the same and there is really no seperation between any of us. Happiness is not something that is meant to be constant because the only constant in our lives is change.
So when we spend all of our days searching for happiness, like the butterfly it will elude us because happiness is not found. It just is. The pursuit of happiness versus the pursuit of meaning has been playing on my mind for the last few days spurred first by a post about a man who helped to change my life many years ago. A man I never met. A man whose experience was so far from mine yet we shared a common bond that goes back to the search for meaning - our search for our place in the world. And it came from a very wise Jewish man who endured the Holocast and came out not as a bitter man but as a better and changed man. A grown man called Viktor Frankl.
Viktor Frankl came into my life when I was first discovering Spirituality and the quest for more meaning in my life. For some reason I was drawn to his story. Only to discover it was because I was on the same journey - trying to find meaning in my life. Once I read his story, I knew I was being led to him for a reason. To learn that no matter who I may blame for my shortcomings or dislike because of theirs, the person I am really grappling with is none other than myself.
So whenever I am confronted by hostile situations, I listen carefully to the words being spoken and then I ask myself is this situation about me or is it about the person who is accusing. When I believe it is more about the person, I know no matter how much I may try to explain my perspective, until that person is ready to see the battle is coming from within himself or herself, I will never make any progress so I walk away and leave the person to deal with his or her own demons.
And the same is true about me. If I find I am defensive and attacking another, I know it is because there is a deep rooted fear within me that is coming to light to allow me to learn more about myself. To face my own demons. Often very difficult to recognise and even more difficult to accept and change.
Then Viktor Frankl left me again only to come back to me yesterday through a blog posted by a mother, Devon Corneal, on Huffington Post called, The Pursuit of Happiness. This mother wrote from her heart that she did not want her children to pursue happiness because in her opinion it is fleeting but what she did want her children to pursue is meaning. Her article resonated with me so much because I knew it was Viktor Frankl speaking to me again.
Asking me to remember more than anything the search for purpose, for meaning in this life is the only means to happiness because without purpose, I will never know true happiness. Asking me to remember always,
“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning