All You Need

When I was a young girl, I had this idea that I gleaned from the famous Beatles song that all you needed to have happiness was Love, pure and simple. Over the years, I have been corrected several times -- told that my youthful idea was a little too idealistic... a little unrealistic. I was told that in order to be happy, you also must have Health and Money, in addition to Love of course. Well, I got older and I bought into this very realistic notion of happiness. It worked for me. I had all of those things, and I was happy -- it made sense.
It seems that now life is a little different. By many people's definitions, we no longer have ample amounts of two of the three ingredients for happiness. We are back to basics -- just Love. Being the logical type that I am, I had to ask myself how it is that I could still be happy? While thinking about this today, I realized that it couldn't be just happiness that I feel, but something deeper -- something that is strong enough to survive on Love alone -- it must be Joy. Upon realizing this, I felt a great sense of relief. We aren't destined to unfufilling or sorrowful lives. While we may not measure up to the standards of the world's idea of what it is to be happy, we have joy in our lives. And for that, love is all you need.