“There comes a day, when you’re gonna look around, and realize happiness is where you are….” -Where You Are, Disney's Moana
It seems that’s the story of many of our lives, isn’t? We begin with a grand dream, only to later discover that getting what we want is out of our reach. So we redefine how we will traverse life. In Disney’s story Chief Tui woke up to this new reality when he lost his best friend in a sailing accident.
Can you think of a time in your life when you suddenly had to shift your interests just to find personal happiness “where you are”? I can freely admit that this has happened more than once to me. It started out as me wanting to be a Marine Biologist, but honestly there are just areas of science I can’t grasp within Marine Biology- mostly those that deal with math. So I switched and tried to find a way into Dolphin Assisted-Therapy. But that too was outside of my reach, no one could provide me with a list of degrees that would get me into the field, and then I got married. I’ve switched several times to things that I am good at, even got a degree in one, but ultimately there are a number of issues that work against me.
It sounds like a lot of excuses, doesn’t it? The truth is, when you look at your life and what you have, you make sacrifices because there are some things that make you happy and you don’t want to lose them. For Chief Tui, it was his love for his people that kept him from pursuing a life of adventure. For me, it is equally my love for my husband and son that keeps me from pursuing anything that would take me away from them for too long. My happiness IS where I am, NOT what I’ve settled for. And that’s the truth of Chief Tui’s message to Moana.
But at some point, we have to recognize that our truth, is not necessarily the truth of another. Just because I love my family more than I love Marine Science, doesn’t mean that my son will love people more than he loves whatever he is passionate about. If Chief Tui had really considered what he was telling Moana, and how it truly related to his own life, I think he might realize that the truth of those in the community and himself, were really just him projecting onto Moana.
You see, after Marine Biology fell through, everything I ever pursued was towards helping my fellow man. Even the reason I wanted to become a Marine Biologist gave me a hint to this end- Dolphins. Despite every set back, I did find a way to pursue my passion of helping others. Here. In the Jedi Community. This community has afforded me so many opportunities to reach out and communicate with people that were in distress, and it caused me to seek out training which would help me build strong skills to assist them and sometimes even the ability to pass along those skills to students.
What about you? Have you found happiness “where you are?”, or are you still seeking it out? Don’t give up, we may not all be fated for world fame or even what we dreamed originally we wanted to do. But we can all find happiness, if we just pursue it and understand what true happiness looks like to ourselves- not what we settle for.