The Worst Advice I've Ever Heard About Happiness

Don't worry, be happy. When you hear that saying, you may get the impression that it is super easy to be happy. It should be the easiest thing in the world, but for some people, it takes a little bit more time to find true happiness and self-love.

Last month, I found myself in the hospital, asking for some help with my depression. I was only there for a few hours, but while I was there, I spoke to a doctor about how I was feeling. I explained that I was feeling a sadness deep down, struggling with the fact that I had a wonderful life but I still felt incomplete and empty. I told the doctor that I just couldn't find happiness. The doctor informed me that happiness doesn't exist.

Wait...what? Did I hear that right?

I almost had to pinch myself. Here I was speaking to a doctor, someone who should maybe understand my illness, but he was telling me that happiness wasn't real? This just didn't make any sense to me, because why would anyone be advertising this? Maybe the doctor was sad himself, or maybe he was just evil. Either way, he reinforced the fact that happiness is just a construct of the mind. He went on to explain that we should just search to be content.

Confused, I sat there in awe. Tears were forming in my eyes as the doctor further explained, happiness is just an idea. Life sucks, and the most we can do is to just be content with it. The doctor told me everything but the words, it was a mistake for me to come to the hospital. I was looking for treatment at the time, and he asked me if I was sure. He explained that the process dehumanizes you and you might not get the help you need.

But I was already being dehumanized, being forced to sit alone locked in a room with just a bed and a small window on the door. There was a security guard that sat outside my door as if I was dangerous to other people in the hospital, when realistically, people who come to the hospital for help with mental health issues are more likely to be a danger to themselves. It was like a prison cell, and I had only been here for a few hours. What would a week feel like?

I was so angry. I went home with my pockets empty that night, fed up with the way I was being treated and disappointed in the system. I felt worse coming out of the hospital than I did coming into it, because we've added on this feeling of dread deep down in my bones. I couldn't help but wonder if my mission was useless, if life was pointless - if you're trying to convince someone to live, shouldn't you be showing them that there's hope in the world?

Happiness doesn't exist? Bullshit. I now know that happiness exists, that it comes to me sometimes in dreams and in the words that my boyfriend says to me in the mornings. I see happiness in sunsets, in dark forests where I could write novels, and in scratch tickets (especially when I win).

As I'm writing this, the commercial for Bell's Let's Talk day (January 31) comes on TV. It says something like, "What does someone with a mental illness look like? Like all of us." I feel the brush of happiness as I realize that the world may be one step closer to understanding more people.

Don't worry, be happy. Though that advice for happiness doesn't always help. The worst advice that I've ever gotten about happiness looked me straight in the face and told me that it wasn't real. I just can't believe that, because I find more and more happiness every day.

Here's a tip: don't let anyone tell you that you can't be happy, or successful, or anything that you want to be. You're capable of conquering the world, if you'd only try.