...but does it make you happy..?

Years ago I saw a self-made painting of a friend, of almost inseparable shades of white and light grey. In small fragile letters, as if the words had fallen accidentally on the canvas, it said:“..but does it make you happy?”. You should try to picture the painting from this description..

Reading this question can be annoying some how and it is therefore easily thrown down the bucket of cliché’s, by a lot of us. Not everything is supposed to make you happy, does it? Isn’t it perfectly acceptable to simply hate that one co-worker, get annoyed by your sister-in-law all the time and to be just unable to bake the perfect lasagne? Or more existential; sometimes you simply need to work for a living, accept physical illness and live with painful losses of loved ones. As we all have to, right?

Also, some things are fine not being the way we initially desired, as long as we are aware to what amount or why we are compromising on them. For example on where and how to live, where to work and what to do for a living, who to live with or without…  

Though when I put all these rational observations aside, there is a different fragrance I can smell the question in as well.. Can you? It seems to speak to me on a different level of consciousness, when my heart opens to it.  

… I should be writing, it makes me happy..