The Hardest Part of Life

I think the hardest part of life is happiness. It only happens in short spurts, now and then. When it's gone we try to live in the past instead of in the moment. As we get older, happiness is harder to achieve. Then when we do have happiness, it's hard to enjoy it because we know it's fleeting, so we try to memorialize it with pictures and videos and trinkets. By the time we are old, we rarely experience true happiness because mentally we are in the past and it's hard to be grateful for things you've experienced countless times. That and many people who make us happy have passed away so we cannot experience them anymore. People feel pressured by social norms to smile and act happy, but it takes away the savor of true happiness and gratitude because it's acting and not real. Had we never truly experienced happiness then life wouldn't be so hard and full of disappointment because everyday would be the same and things going wrong would be normal and less painful. We wouldn't have to act out what we aren't really feeling.