Happiness is a choice.

This is the simple principle I live my life by. Over this last year or so, I have learned how to be happy even when it is difficult to make that choice. Sometimes crap just seems to rain down on your head, and sometimes it is easy to get buried in that crap, but you really can choose to stand up in the air, shake your fist at the world and scream: "I am happy, dang it!"
And while I have discovered this simple principle to be true, again and again, I have also noticed something else. While happiness is still a choice, it is also a process. More than a single choice, it could be more accurate to say that happiness is a series of choices. Decisions define us. Daily, everyday little decisions. Deciding to choose the right has the power to make us infinitely happy if we so choose. On the other hand, deciding to go against what is right has the power to make us sad, unfortunate souls.
Truly, I have learned that each little decision matters, because the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, but each part still constitutes the whole.