How Do We Get To Peace, Love, and Happiness?

I have been thinking a lot lately about how to see similarities in people on all sides of the equation. 

You may or may not know this about me but one of my side hustles (HAHAHA! I don’t make money on it “yet”) is studying people, their interactions, behavior, relationships, and idiosyncrasies. I have been doing it my whole life, originally what I called “people watching”. Then I started learning nuances about body language through sporadic bits of information coming in through random sources. 

I have taken courses on the subject which have always been amongst my most favorite subjects outside of art. The environment I grew up in also had a major influence on my insight of people. 

I want to say that I am NOT an expert in people, psychology, sociology, or anything related. I am just an enthusiastic observer. 

Anyway… similarities… I think most people are looking for the same thing. They want peace, love, and happiness, but they don’t know how to do that.  We have been conditioned to believe that we have to go to work, do this thing, earn X amount of money, or go through some miraculous event. 

I often think about the basics of living on our planet. We need shelter, food, water, and connection. Those basics are ingrained to us as beings living on the planet if you really stop and think about it. They are in nature as she is. If we take our current society out of the equation, we can grow our own food, forage, and water is available all around us. We can make various kinds of shelter from the things around us or we can use caves. 

I know, this all sounds so ridiculous and primitive. I have heard it so many times from people believing that how we live now is how it's supposed to be. At least here in the United States, that’s the common belief. For example, you are homeless if you live in a car. What if these beliefs of living were installed into our heads because of capitalism? Yes, some people that live in cars consider themselves homeless and are very uncomfortable in their situation. Other people choose to live in a car because they value freedom of choice over being a slave to the system. 

We are at a point where we make money to buy our food, housing, and water. That’s not innate to living on the planet. That’s slavery to the system of capitalism. It tells us that we will be happy when we buy this new car or when we live in this sprawling house in a particular neighborhood. 

The system tells us what food to eat, what clothing to buy, and the entertainment to consume. The system tells you that your happiness comes when you comply with what we tell you to do. 

And the majority of people have eaten this narrative up completely! I did! I participated wholeheartedly in it. I bought the houses. I bought the cars. I created a career. I paid for water. I went to the tourist spots. 

But my everyday life was not happy. I was ALWAYS insecure with a mountain of debt, a couple weeks of vacation, and constantly frustrated with feeling trapped in this thing we call life. I searched for the thing that would fix it for a very long time trying all kinds of job ideas. 

I was VERY fortunate to have been able to pull off a complete overhaul of my life during COVID. I do not want to take away from the privilege that I had at the time and I also don’t want to take away from the fact that it was also really difficult to mentally break the chains of the beliefs of the capitalistic system.  I still really struggle with it because I am NOT completely free of it. I still buy food and a car and many other things.  

Here are some of the “drastic” things that I have done to escape. I sold the houses and bought land with no livable structures on it (I am extremely aware that this option is not available to most people). I live in a completely paid for RV trailer. I sold a lot of things. I rarely buy clothing. I also rarely eat out. 

I acknowledge that I am extremely fortunate to have followed the path I did in my life and receive a bit of money every month to provide me the opportunity to follow this new path. I also am extremely fortunate to have people around me that help out a lot.  

Which brings me to a point I want to make that also brings me back to the original needs of basic living. We can all live similarly if we stop participating in the system as it is. We can start participating in a system that supports one another. We can barter for food from local grocers who provide food from local farms. We can barter with hand made clothing or other necessities. We can live closer together in communities built to support each other as people and not support the big money billionaire system. 

And you know what the best part of all of this new(old) way of living is? That last need we all have, connection, would be inherent in this. We would all be happier because we wouldn’t have this looming debt and “need” to go to work to pay the bills. We simply support one another. 

Through the process I have gone through I have realized that peace, love and happiness is a CHOICE. We have to CHOOSE to be happy. We make that choice through the way we see the world. We make that choice through the way we see each other. The choices we make should be based on the whole of everything. WE are all connected and therefore our collective choices create peace, love, and happiness for everyone else also. 

I don’t have the reference but I have seen research that asked who are the happiest people around the world. The answer is always when people take care of each other and the planet. 

Lady Daisy - Painted on old metal siding - click 👆 to contact me for a mural or a painting of your very own to reconnect you to the goodness we are surrounded by but don't always see.