Let me guess. You’ve probably been told, directly or indirectly, that happiness means ticking every single box.
Career success? Check.
Romantic love? Check.
A healthy body, a clutter-free house, perfect skin, fulfilling hobbies, a pet with hypoallergenic hair? Check, check, check.
And still, you don’t feel complete. Funny, isn’t it?
We live in a world that sells us a version of happiness so polished, so airbrushed, it wouldn’t survive a single day in real life.
But there’s this quiet, persistent whisper in the cultural background:
“You can have it all, and when you do, then you’ll be happy.”
Ha.
Ha.
ahahahahahhahahahhahahha
Spoiler: that whisper is lying. It’s an illusion.
I just saw an Instagram reel the other day with a young woman, it was a video made up of clips of her doing different kinds of activities (most of them sport-related) and she had the nerve to put this caption on it, “They said I couldn’t have it all, and I have it all,” or something like that.
Darling, get over yourself.
Maybe you’re not reading this, but if you are, get OVER yourself.
If you actually pay attention to the video, you can see a compilation of her cycling, hiking, travelling somewhere exotic, going for nice meals, going to work, whatever.
Honey, what are you talking about???
“They said you couldn’t have it all,” so you proved them wrong? How? How? Tell us!
By travelling in your twenties?
By journalling while looking out of a café window?
Who’s going to tell her? Who’s going to burst her little bubble?
She doesn’t even have proper responsibilities or struggles to begin with. It’s hilarious. She mostly filmed herself doing different sports or leisure activities, for god’s sake!
Anyway.
Let’s forget about Wendy, and let me ask you this, what if happiness isn’t about having it all?
Whatever that particular ‘all’ means to you.
Let’s all say this together: you will never have it all.
At least not ‘all’ at the ‘same time’.
And that’s not a tragic truth. It’s just… truth.
Lack is a structural part of being human. We’re born incomplete, and we spend much of our lives trying to stitch ourselves together. Sometimes with love, sometimes with work, sometimes with distraction.
But the idea that we’ll one day arrive at a state of wholeness, that everything will be in place, nothing missing, no ache, no unanswered questions?
That idea is what hurts us most.
So, what does it look like to be happy and still in pain?
Well, it looks like this:
A woman who lost her brother last year. She laughs again now, even hard enough to cry. But there’s a soft ache in her smile. And that’s okay.
A couple who wanted children but couldn’t have them. They still go on weekend getaways, still argue about what to watch on Netflix, still hold hands under the table at dinner parties. There’s joy there. It’s real. It’s also incomplete.
Or a young man, diagnosed with a chronic illness at 38. His energy comes and goes, but he’s writing a novel, slowly. He meets his friends for coffee when he can.
Or another example, a woman aged 65, recently retired and feeling like she’s lost the map to her own life. Her days are quieter now, lonelier too. But she’s taken up sketching, nothing fancy, just outlines of birds from her window.
Do you see it?
This is what I mean. It’s not fireworks and champagne. It’s not ticking off the whole bucket list of countries to travel.
It’s the quiet recognition that, even with all the shadows, there are still moments that give us joy.
We’ve just… been sold the wrong idea.
Social media doesn’t help. Neither do self-help books that promise seven easy steps to a perfect life. Or people actually lying to others (and themselves) about what their life really feels like.
We’ve been trained to think happiness is a destination, a checklist, a reward for getting life “right”.
But who gets it right? And, more importantly, who gets it right on the first attempt?
You see…
We must learn to live with what is missing.
Because the truth is, some things don’t heal. Some dreams don’t come true. Some relationships break. Some questions don’t get answered.
And still, we get up. We make food. We text someone we love. We dance in the kitchen. We feel the sun on our face and let out a sigh that is neither joy nor sadness, but something beautifully in between.
We stop searching for the moment when everything will make perfect sense. Instead, we start honouring the sweet fragments. The quiet days. The meals eaten alone, but in peace. The unremarkable hours where nothing hurts too much.
And no, excuse me, that’s not “just settling”.
Not even close.
This isn’t about giving up. It’s about giving in to reality. There’s a difference.
Accepting the imperfection of life doesn’t mean you stop trying. It means you stop fighting against the fact that life is messy, contradictory, sometimes (all the time) absurd. It means you make room for both laughter and longing.
Think of it like this, when you stop demanding that your life be perfect, you start noticing how rich it already is. You stop measuring it against impossible standards (social media fake standards, maybe) and start experiencing it. As it is. Not as it “should” be.
And it doesn’t mean we stop dreaming. Dreaming is beautiful. But there’s a difference between dreaming and denying. Between reaching and refusing to stand where you are. Wendy doesn’t know that yet, she’s still dreaming, looking through the window waiting for her ‘Peter Pan’.
Listen.
One of the most liberating realisations I’ve had is that joy and sadness aren’t mutually exclusive. They dance together, constantly.
Like, for example, you can miss someone fiercely and still feel deep gratitude for having known them. You can be anxious about the future and still laugh at a meme your friend sent.
Life is never one thing. So why should happiness be?
So, I invite you to feel, to hold your contradictions with tenderness. I never give recipes or easy fixes, I’m not a coach.
And that’s what I want to offer you, dear reader. Not answers, but permission.
Permission to be happy and still ache. To love and still mourn. To grow and still get stuck. To live with a heart that has been cracked and mended, and cracked again.
Next time you feel like your life is “almost” good enough, like there’s always one more thing missing, one more thing to fix, one more thing to do…
Pause.
Now.
Pause.
Look around. What if this messy, incomplete, beautiful moment is already worth calling happiness?
The world needs more honest happiness, exactly like yours. Not like Wendy and her oh so fake reel.
Love,
Noemi
P.S. This is Wendy if you’re still curious, the real one though. Here.
