I’ve found myself using the word truly a lot to express myself. I’ve used it to describe truly beautiful forest walks, I’ve used it when I felt truly grateful when my dad recovered miraculously well after surgery, and when my brothers were visiting and we spent the night playing cards I knew I was truly blessed for my family. After saying this word more and more, I started to wonder why do I connect with this word and what does it truly mean? 

 

I thought about how there are two layers to our lives - The outer layer and the inner layer.

 

The outer layer is the feelings that you think you should have and what the world tells us we should be. We promise ourselves that when we get a certain job, have x amount of money, meet the person that ticks enough boxes, purchase ‘the’ car and dress in the right clothes, that when we have all these things we will be happy. 

When our checklist is complete and we don’t feel happiness we convince ourselves that maybe we need to add more to the list. The list didn’t include a house, a promotion or that perfect ‘beach body’, and you believe that after you achieve these new things, then you will definitely feel happy.

 

We continually search for happiness in the outer layer. We idolise lives of celebrities because they appear to have it all, we scroll through our facebook feed and convince ourselves that all our friends and acquaintances have figured out the happiness thing. So we continue on the quest - obsessing over possessions and appearances, looking for approval through how many likes we can get on social media. The quest is tiring.

 

When I was on this quest I was exhausted and confused. I tried to convince myself that I should be happy because I had a great job that others would love to have; I should be happy because I was dating a guy that ticked the boxes, but didn’t make me feel the way I knew I could feel. I should be happy because I was living in a bustling, exciting city on the other side of the world. I attempted to surround myself with distractions so I could hide away from what I knew needed to be asked -  “Am I Truly Happy?”

 

When I asked myself if I was Truly Happy, I found that it dug past the outer layer and connected with a deeper part of myself, it signalled to my heart and soul to ignite my inner layer. The inner layer isn’t phased by what the world tells you you should be, feel and have. The inner layer is your true self. I finally allowed myself to listen to my inner layer and the messages I received were life changing.