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i FOUGHT to be THIS happy

“Professor, are you happy?”
“Wilbur, I am happier than I have been, but I cannot say that I am happy yet.”
Professor…so when will you know when you are happy?

My student had asked me a question for which I had no answer. He stated that if many from his country had what I did that they could say, today, they were happy. Then he left and I was wide open.

I thought about my life. I had a job working in the Mayor’s Office, was by that time ranked as a bestselling author, and was teaching international students who valued education and wanted to learn. If I was doing the same thing in NYC or London would that make me happy?

Had I not reached full happiness because I was not doing what I wanted in a particular place? Was I not happy because reality was out of sequence with my dreams? Could I not be alive to what was present because I only kept in view those things which were absent? Which I had lost?

Then it hit me. Happiness had often eluded me because I kept choosing to include things not in my life as the litmus test for having attained it. That day I became happy. That day I became happy. That day I became happy! (Happy and smiling 24/7 are not the same).

i FOUGHT to be THIS happy offers 35 moments of wisdom, laughter, pain, failure, loss, discovery and personal revelation which allowed me to reach 35 completely happy. It is about grace and surrender, embracing the now, and fighting until happiness overwhelms wherever you are...today.