I think it can be assumed that most parents tell their kids to ignore the pressure to drink, smoke or have sex. But despite their good intentions, parents are just as often the source of detrimental pressure.

It’s nothing other than the ever-present pressure to be happy.

Think about conversations you’ve had with your parents who just want the best for you; they say things like ‘It doesn’t matter what you do, we just want you to be happy.’

Hearing this should be a relief. I mean, it’s better than kindergarten when your parents said they just wanted the best for you, ‘even if it means sending you away to a Russian gymnastics academy.’ Sure, they were joking.

Whether we see it immediately or not, the pressure to be happy is everywhere.

Pressure has long been viewed as the act of pushing somebody to do something that he or she shouldn’t do. Because of this, many people fail to understand how one can feel pressured into something that seems positive. Even though happiness can hardly be considered a bad thing, you can be pressured into it all the same, and rushing a good thing is never a good choice ‘ though Vegas chapels will tell you a different story.

Yes, happiness is one of the many things in life that cannot be hurried, mostly because it is not strictly a linear progression. If you rush through life, constantly checking things off your list of what needs to be done for happiness, you will most likely end up unsatisfied and tired with carpal tunnel (which definitely takes the enjoyment out of using your favorite stress ball).

Yet everybody and their mother (and their mother’s tennis instructor) wants to be happy. This idea that everyone should be happy is in fact so prevalent in our society that people feel entitled to this emotion and assume it should be at their beck and call. As a result, when people fall short of feeling like a Disney princess on opiates, they think themselves cheated.

The simple truth is that not everyone is happy all the time. Of course people want to be joyful, but being so focused on it takes away from experiencing the present moment and other more subtle emotions that we may overlook because we allow ourselves to be blinded to anything other than pure ecstasy. Additionally, the way happiness is marketed in America ‘ where there is an abundance of self-help and get-happy books ‘ makes people feel like it takes hard work to get there.

We are simply creating unnecessary pains in the name of pleasure.

As so many inspirational posters in elementary schools preach ‘ along with that fortune cookie that seriously changed you ‘ it truly is the journey of life that is important. So let’s hypothesize. If the adventure of life is more important than your happy destination, then life is more important than happiness. Well, my seventh grade life science teacher did say it wouldn’t work for everything, but we can draw some valuable information from this simple train of thought.

It may sound silly to say that life is more important than happiness, but when you think about all the people wasting away their life searching for happiness, you realize that you cannot get that time back. You have to prioritize. Rather than constantly searching our environment, we should be acting on it, really living, or it will be a grave mistake.

If we did not hear as often as we do the importance of being happy, we would be much less inclined to doubt our own levels of happiness and just live. Ignore the pressure. Life’s a party, cry if you want to.