Where is Happiness to be Found?

 John Cowper Powys believed the purpose of life is to be happy.  But despite the fact that we all want to be happy it seems to evade us.  Part of the problem, he argued, is that we look for it in the wrong places.  We look externally to other people and possessions but the source of true happiness lies elsewhere...

 "It is not our struggle to be happy that is mistaken; it is our
false idea that we can find happiness anywhere but in ourselves. 

Pleasure can come and go at random and by chance for it depends on outward things; but happiness does not depend on outward things. It is born of the mind, it is nourished by the mind, it is what rises, like breath in a frosty air, from the mind’s wrestling with its fate. We are not born to be happy. We are born to struggle for happiness. We are born because of pleasure, but we are born in pain. We are surrounded by pain, and we are lucky if our end is painless. But deep within us is a sacred fount, from whose channel, by a resolute habit of the will, we can clear away the litter that obstructs the water of life. Not in what we possess, not in what we achieve, not in the opinion of others, not in hope, not in admiration, not in love, not in anything below or above the sun, is the secret of happiness to be found. 

It is only to be found in ourselves."

(John Cowper Powys, The Art of Happiness)