One of the hardest days of my life was the day my brother went through surgery with only a fifty percent chance of surviving it.

I was 15, and could stay home alone while my younger brother was with my grandparents and my parents were with my middle brother at the hospital. I went to the video library store near our house and rented Francis, one of the saddest movies I’ve ever watched. I pressed play, and I cried and cried and cried.

My brother survived the surgery, but was diagnosed with leukemia, and went through various therapies for two years until he won over cancer. As soon as he returned home, my mother’s health declined, and she was diagnosed with cancer and died within three months. 

Due to this heavy story, I held on to perpetual joy for many years. The first reason was that my brother, while fighting cancer, never ceased to remain optimistic and humorous. He used to make his doctors and caretakers laugh. He played games and kept his playful, joyful attitude even through the hardest days. His spirit was likely what saved him. 

The other thing was that I experienced the fragility of life up close and concluded that heavy emotions were a waste of time.

The young girl who rented a sad movie to cry out her deep pain was gone. She was replaced by a young woman who was always happy. 

When I moved to NYC and lived my dream, partied, and felt free like I’d never before, I honestly believed that I had found the cure to human suffering. “It was just a matter of a state of mind,” I thought. “Life is a giant amusement park,” I would say, “and it’s up to us to choose happiness over misery and enjoy it.”

I’d already started meditating at that time and was curious about spirituality. I once went to a Buddhist talk in NYC, and the teacher spoke about the suffering of life, aging, sickness, and death. I got so annoyed! There was no suffering in my life! I chose not to feel it, I was above it, beyond it – it was my choice, and it could have been everyone else’s too. 

This perception was not mine alone. Many famous people and spiritual leaders have said similar things. Walt Disney, for example, said that, “Happiness is a state of mind. You can be happy or you can be unhappy.” Paulo Coelho said, “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.”

But my story did not end there. My jolly happy NYC years of choosing happiness and joy at all costs ended up with a severe depression that brought me down to my knees. I had realized that while holding on to joy, I was repressing my genuine, honest emotions. I dismissed anything that might have caused me suffering, thus living a fantasy that was disconnected from reality. 

My “choosing happiness tower” collapsed, and I was thrown from the top down to the underworld. I realized that my beliefs did not hold water, so to speak, and I had to develop a new belief system.

It is a fact that joy has helped my brother to survive and thrive. But we can’t repress our pain and our suffering in the name of happiness. We need to adopt a positive, adventurous approach to life, but also recognize that sometimes we don’t feel happy, and this is also a part of life. 

The expectation that we will always feel happy is what often makes us miserable.

Leo is the sign of joy, happiness, creativity, and playfulness. Leos don’t like to deal with the heavy parts of life; they would rather choose happiness at any moment. And if it’s not happiness, it should at least be a good drama that could make a movie scene. 

We are approaching the Full Moon in Aquarius. Like Leo, Aquarius dislikes heaviness. Unlike Leo, Aquarius does not like drama. It might research the phenomena of suffering and heaviness, but won’t allow itself to feel it or act out of it.  

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Thinking we should be able to have a life without any suffering is as deluded as thinking we should be able to have a left side without a right side.”

This week is an excellent opportunity to reflect on your approach to happiness. Do you expect yourself to be happy all the time? What do you do when heaviness presents itself? Do you push it away or embrace it, process the pain, and allow yourself to be with it? And when it gets dark, do you maintain faith that there is a light at the end of the tunnel? 

I’d love to hear from you,

Have a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael