Agency and Happiness

2 Nephi 10: 23

"Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves-to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life."

I had an interesting realization this morning: Agency is often the greatest source of happiness in this life.  Why?  Because we can choose.  We can choose what lifestyle we want, and the blessings associated with living a healthy, active, and restful life.  We can choose how to react to the circumstances around us- we can choose to be cheerful.

Too often we consign ourselves to our bad circumstances, explaining that we had a bad day because we didn't do so well on a test, got in a fight with our roommate, or whatever.  What we're really saying, though, is that our reactions to those events made us unhappy.  It is important to allow ourselves to feel- even when that's sad, hurt, or angry.  Those feelings tell us that something is up- that we didn't like the way we were treated (and thus shouldn't treat others that way), that we are disappointed about an outcome (and might need to study harder or alter our expectations in the future), or something else.  But it's what we do next that matters.  If we allow ourselves to see the incident through the lens of the eternal plan of happiness, we can learn to approach our lives a little differently.  We can use experiences of hurt to learn, and thus to become more completely the divine sons and daughters that our Heavenly Father knows we can be.

Even though it is often the agency of others that hurts us deeply, it is that same agency that enables us to be wonderful, blessed people anyway.