What do you really want? Not what you’re supposed to want. Not what you’ve been taught to want. But what do you truly long for? What are you willing to release to pursue it?

What if the thing you want isn’t the thing you need?

Can you ever know yourself without surrendering your desires?

Can our desires be trusted? Are they a compass or a distraction? A whisper from God or a trick of the flesh?

We live in a world aching with sorrow—fractured by injustice, loneliness, and grief too deep for words. And yet, we’ve built altars to happiness. Not the kind rooted in joy or meaning, but the kind that promises escape. We build our own ‘worldly heavens’ hoping to outrun the ache. It blinds us to the sacredness of sadness.

Perhaps real joy doesn’t come from masking the brokenness but comes from meeting it, naming it, and discovering that God is already there.

• Enlightenment Now
• Brave New World

In a culture obsessed with comfort, dopamine hits, and curated joy, we’ve been sold the idea that happiness is something we can chase, hack, or buy. In fact you might say that we live in a happiness cult, we worship happiness, and it’s become our ‘idol’. But what if that chase is precisely what’s making us anxious, disconnected, and spiritually thin?

This isn’t a call to abandon happiness. It’s an invitation to reorder it.

What if the good life isn’t found in feeling good, but in becoming good? What if joy is not the prize—but the echo of a life lived with purpose?

• The Misery of Chasing Happiness | Psychology Today