A recipe for Happiness?

I have been thinking a lot lately about this elusive idea of happiness that we are supposed to be seeking. How do we decide when we are happy? And how much do we compare ourselves with the images presented in the media? I have come to believe that our happiness is largely determined by how our own life measures up to the lives of our friends as well as to the life that our media exposure convinced us we should have. If you are a woman, it seems that it is not enough anymore. You better be a superwoman! You have to have a career, raise a family, you have to stay fit and young because ,well, there are so many others out there who do it for a living but none the less make you feel inadequate for not fitting the mold... And on top of everything else, if you have a family you better be the perfect wife & mother. How can anyone live up to this impossible standard? All it does is make you feel inadequate and slow for not being able to keep up with the world.
If you are single, you are supposed to search for an idealized person that quite possibly does not exist and anything less is a mistake because, let's be serious, only the world and the media knows what is good for you and what makes you happy. Yeah, right....And they are going to make their voice know, so are you strong enough to resist? Are you strong enough to choose for yourself and follow your own heart, seek your own kind of happiness. Because happiness is a funny thing... it is not a universal recipe and you might not even know what it is until you found it. So how do you pursue happiness? Or, should you even try? Maybe it is better to just take every day as it is and try to do your best. All you can hope for is that at the end of the day, your conscience is clear, there is no guilt lingering in your heart and you have no regrets. So my recipe for happiness right now seems to be a state of no guilt and no regrets. I hope I will get there, some day... How about you?

To be home again...

I have been traveling quite a lot this past year, inside and outside the U.S., and I am just getting ready to leave again in a couple of days. Don't get me wrong, I love traveling... but I miss being home and doing the simplest things, even cooking or cleaning. I know, it's strange, but I do. However, this last trip is supposed to be half work, half play, so I am actually really looking forward to it. I hope it will go well. I am really trying not to raise my expectations because my eternal problem is unrealistic expectations followed by varying degrees of disappointment. I have been trying to live by Becker's motto: "No expectations, no disappointments." but it is nearly impossible. I am a dreamer and a planner and high expectations come with the package. So I am shooting for a middle ground right now, some expectations, but one of those expectations should be the unexpected and the fact that things do not always turn out the way we plan. I read this somewhere, and I wish I remembered who said it, but I believe it to be true: "Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans."