I was sitting at a coffee shop with a group of friends, laughing at their jokes, when suddenly I felt this wave of sadness. There was no event or reason for it—nothing had happened to make me feel this way. So, I started asking myself, Why am I feeling sad? Why should I feel sad when I’m with my favorite people?

In that moment, I realized I was pretending to be happy while feeling sad inside. I asked myself: When was the day I lost my real happiness? I couldn’t pinpoint any one moment, but I noticed something striking. As a child, I used to laugh hundreds of times a day. Now, as an adult, it had reduced to maybe 15 or 20 times a day. Why was that?

As children, we loved to play in the rain, without worrying about getting sick. But as adults, we fear catching a cold or fever. A child might break a teacup and laugh it off, but as an adult, we immediately think about the cost of replacing it. What happened to us? Why do we get so concerned about things we once found so enjoyable?

In my search for answers, I did what most of us do when seeking solutions: I turned to Google. The blogs I found all offered advice—exercise, sleep more, spend time with loved ones, practice gratitude, meditate, or go on a trip. I tried those things, and while they were helpful, they didn’t seem to work for me.

Then, one day, something shifted. I was riding my motorcycle when it suddenly started to rain. Without a rain jacket, I parked under a tree, hoping it would stop soon. As I stood there, grumbling about the rain, I noticed something across the street. A child stood in the rain, laughing, shouting not out of frustration but out of joy. He jumped and danced, enjoying the moment with no care in the world.

At that moment, I thought, How can he be so happy in the same rain that’s frustrating me?

I took off my bag and walked away from the tree, feeling the raindrops against my skin. I started to get wet, but something shifted in me. All the things I had worried about began to fade away. The smell of the wet earth, the sound of the rain, the feeling of the cool drops—it was all so refreshing. I felt free.

From that day on, I started to find happiness in the little things: watching a bird fly, the clouds moving across the sky, the warmth of sunlight streaming through the window.

Happiness was always within my reach. It was right there, hiding in plain sight. All along, I had been searching for it somewhere else. But the truth is, happiness is everywhere around us. Whether we choose to see it or ignore it, that choice is ours.

“Happiness isn’t something we find; it’s something we choose to see in the world around us.”