My Inspiration-Happiness by Cecilia

My Inspiration-Happiness by Cecilia - February 2014 Scholarship Essay

"Happiness is a decision. You are only as happy as decide to be."

These words have a very powerful meaning behind them, but some people across the world fail to see it or remember it. What makes you happy? Who controls if you are happy are not? The answer, as mentioned in the quote above is very simple; it is you. You are the only one that controls your happiness. Nobody else can control it. You have all the power.

Many people fail to see that they are the ones that control their happiness. For example, I was always complaining about everything, even for the simplest of things, like I could not find a boyfriend. If something went wrong or if I felt sad, I thought it was the end of the world. I would blame everybody for my unhappiness. I was the victim. Looking back I was so self-centered. However, my life completely changed.

In the year 2009, my little brother was born. He was born with Down Syndrome. The day he was born he had to directly go into surgery. He was in the hospital for months. The doctors always found something wrong with him, which seemed like everyday. They found heart problems, stomach problems, lung problems and hearing problems. One day they even told us that he was in his death bed and we should go say our goodbyes. Luckily, he came back from that. After being released from the hospital and as years passed, the slow development of physical and motor skills was apparent. I always felt sad, for a while the happiness in my home left.

However, my family and I would always see that my little brother was the happiest person ever. He was always laughing and just messing around with everybody. He is the life of the family. I started thinking that this little boy is the happiest person I had ever seen despite everything he is going through. He was always just so happy and full of joy. I realized that nobody else's mood affected him. He could sense we were sad sometimes because he would always try to make you laugh, but that never seemed to bring down his mood. Then I came across this quote, " Happiness is a decision. You are only as happy as you decide to be." After that it just hit me, my little brother was the one deciding to be happy and the rest of us were deciding to be unhappy. Our family situation had nothing to do with our unhappiness, we were the ones making ourselves unhappy.

My family and I soon realized what we were doing and we decided we had to change. We never let ourselves be unhappy anymore, just because one of us is going through something rough we still manage to maintain our happiness. Of course, we still get emotional when my little brother has to go to the doctor, but now we are not sad by this. We just look at him and his happiness and we remember that our happiness is our decision and nothing can or will ever change that.