laura.e.anderson97
Happiness
Self is realizing that I am more than my emotions. When I thought about what makes me “me,” I realized that my perception (especially visual) is mostly based on other people so the first thing that came to mind is my smile. Everyone I meet tells me that I am “a very smiley person” and my friend Rachel even calls my smile where my tongue is sticking out a bit “the Laura smile.” This is also a reflection of my self-perception as “stubbornly optimistic;” a description of myself that I use to describe how I cling to hope, gratitude, and positivity despite the immensely tough cards I’ve been dealt. Since I equated “me” with my smile, I wanted to figure out what made my smile so notable to people. So, I investigated how I smiled and laughed with different people in my life. I also captured just my mouth & then just my eyes/nose while smiling, laughing, and being goofy in order to try to see what part of my smile made me “me.” Along the way, though, I realized that capturing just my happy/optimistic side is a one-dimensional view of me.
It can be so easy to define ourselves based on our emotions, but I am constantly realizing more and more how true it is that our emotions are fleeting, so they are not a solid foundation on which to build our identity. When you build your identity on your emotions, it becomes easy to get caught up in BEING your depression or PTSD (reflected in photo #9), rather than allowing those emotions to be temporary visitors in your life. My life completely changed a few years ago when I realized that my identity is staked in one thing and one thing alone: I am loved and saved by Jesus. I am a child of the one true King, the Creator, the Lord and Savior of all the universe. My identity is rooted in his immense love for me, not for what I can do or how I act/feel, but for who I am as His daughter…and the most beautiful part is that this love that my God has for me can never and will NEVER change…so my identity is stable. This is represented in the last photo, which I titled Joy. While happiness and joy are often confused, they are quite different. Happiness is a reaction to good things going on in your life, or even positive feelings that you can get from finding a positive outlook on life. Joy, on the other hand, is an unshakeable gut feeling; it is the knowledge with everything in your soul that there is hope, that you are loved and safe in the arms of Jesus, no matter what is happening in your life. In this last photo, I was feeling joy and peace because I had just read a bible verse that is very personally important to me: Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Happiness
Self is realizing that I am more than my emotions. When I thought about what makes me “me,” I realized that my perception (especially visual) is mostly based on other people so the first thing that came to mind is my smile. Everyone I meet tells me that I am “a very smiley person” and my friend Rachel even calls my smile where my tongue is sticking out a bit “the Laura smile.” This is also a reflection of my self-perception as “stubbornly optimistic;” a description of myself that I use to describe how I cling to hope, gratitude, and positivity despite the immensely tough cards I’ve been dealt. Since I equated “me” with my smile, I wanted to figure out what made my smile so notable to people. So, I investigated how I smiled and laughed with different people in my life. I also captured just my mouth & then just my eyes/nose while smiling, laughing, and being goofy in order to try to see what part of my smile made me “me.” Along the way, though, I realized that capturing just my happy/optimistic side is a one-dimensional view of me.
It can be so easy to define ourselves based on our emotions, but I am constantly realizing more and more how true it is that our emotions are fleeting, so they are not a solid foundation on which to build our identity. When you build your identity on your emotions, it becomes easy to get caught up in BEING your depression or PTSD (reflected in photo #9), rather than allowing those emotions to be temporary visitors in your life. My life completely changed a few years ago when I realized that my identity is staked in one thing and one thing alone: I am loved and saved by Jesus. I am a child of the one true King, the Creator, the Lord and Savior of all the universe. My identity is rooted in his immense love for me, not for what I can do or how I act/feel, but for who I am as His daughter…and the most beautiful part is that this love that my God has for me can never and will NEVER change…so my identity is stable. This is represented in the last photo, which I titled Joy. While happiness and joy are often confused, they are quite different. Happiness is a reaction to good things going on in your life, or even positive feelings that you can get from finding a positive outlook on life. Joy, on the other hand, is an unshakeable gut feeling; it is the knowledge with everything in your soul that there is hope, that you are loved and safe in the arms of Jesus, no matter what is happening in your life. In this last photo, I was feeling joy and peace because I had just read a bible verse that is very personally important to me: Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”