“I just want to be happy.”

I hear it over and over again – usually with a little whine in the tone.

It’s often whimpered as if happiness is some sort of award or a condition that may descend upon a person who is in the right place at the right time.

Truth is, you have more of a chance of being struck by lightning than you have being struck by happiness.

Happiness has no victims. It’s a by-product. It grows out of purposeful living.

Happiness remains out of control – even to the rich and powerful.

You may have noticed its penchant for playing hide and seek with the rich and powerful.

It’s yours when you fight and win the good fight over trying to be happy. It’s yours when you engage purposes greater than yourself, your pleasures, and appetites. The road to happiness is often paved with difficulty, things you may think will never deliver any joy.

It hides from the lazy, the self-indulgent, the entitled, the spoiled, the whiner, but embraces those seeking justice and authenticity and doing what is good and right by others.

Ironically happiness often escapes the rich and makes its home with the poor, the humble.

Oddly, it’s one thing that doesn’t, “follow the money.”