Is Happiness your Priority?

Transcript

Let me tell you something happened to me yesterday and it led me to asking this question.

Is happiness your priority.

I’ll you what happened. I was standing here in Ciudad Nueva in Asunción, Paraguay by my house. Just around the corner waiting for a bus and maybe the bus route information wasn’t quite correct.

I waited for quite a while and the bus didn’t come. I noticed a police squad car come around, and it came around the second time and stopped in front of me.

A police officer got out and he started asking for my identification.

Now me being the independent thinker that I am, the anarchist thought to resist authority or I don’t know what.

I said “Alright well you can show me your identification first.”

The guy didn’t like that he was like “This is a car, this is my badge, what more identification do you need? Now show me yours.”

And I was like “I don’t know about that.”

I refused about 5 times and they’re like “Alright, we’re taking you to the station then.”

And I was like “What, No! Just let me show you my ID, it’s fine.”

And they were like “No it’s too late for that now.”

So they took me to the police station in handcuffs.

As soon as I got out of the car they were like “Okay, we’ll take the cuffs off.” I think they kinda knew that I was no threat after chatting with me for a few minutes in the squad car.

Asking me these loaded questions like “In Australia, do you show this lack of authority?”

I’m not trying to stand up against authority I’m just for my own rights here, there’s a difference.

Anyway they got my ID and ran it, checked with Interpol. I don’t know why that’s such a common thing that Interpol needs to get involved.

Anyway obviously they found there are no outstanding warrants for my arrest around the world. So they said “Oh, that’s fine. We’ll give you a lift to where you’re going.

And I jumped in the squad car again and they start driving me around and they’re asking me questions about Australia.

“Oh Austrailia, there’s kangaroos there right? Do you eat kangaroos?” And that kind of thing, the stuff people like to ask Australians.

And then they dropped me off and gave me some information about the bus routes. Here you can ask these citizens here at the stop to make sure it’s the right place. Take the Route 23 and you can be on your way to Lambaré.

They said “Nice to meet you” and one of them shook my hand.

Now like I said, I’m gonna ask the question. Is happiness a priority?

Cause if this had happened even a few years ago I would have been a lot more antagonistic.

Obviously I was to some extent but I would have kept arguing with them, trying to beat a dead horse. I wouldn’t have recognized our common humanity and began to laugh with these police officers even though they had me in this awkward position.

I probably would have remained angry about it for days or weeks maybe if it came up years later I’d be like “Those little blue blazing bastards.”

But there’s another way to go about it. Turns out, I can just say that’s what happened. I get to choose what I focus on.

So I could focus on the fact that they detained me or I could focus on the fact that they had a laugh with me and gave me a lift and more information about bus schedule that I was previously unaware of.

So who has the power? Maybe bullies have the power sometimes, maybe you have the power.

You have the power over your own attitude. You can choose how to interpret events and you can choose what to focus on.

So I decided yesterday and today to make happiness my priority.

There are other things I could have put higher on the list. My own ego. My own will for self determination or something like that.

I’d rather be happy.

So that is the question. Is happiness your priority?

Thank you so much for listening. Thank for being an excellent audience and enjoying your life and looking for opportunities to be happier in your every day life even when things don’t go as you were expecting.

Have a great day, I’ll talk to you soon.