Required for Happiness

Have you met Lindsay over at Designer Wife?  I heart her!  She makes me laugh and she is such a sweet, sweet girl.  She recently did a post 'Measuring Happiness'.  I loved her post so much, that I want to do a post here too.

Kant said that we require three things by which to measure happiness: someone to love, something we like to do, and something to look forward to.

Whoa!  This has certainly got me thinking.  We can measure our happiness by three things.  Just three simple things.  Someone to love, something we like to do, and something we look forward to.  Let's delve into this a little bit, shall we?

The first part: Someone to love.  Yep, I've got that one completely covered.

Drew is, quite literally, my other half.  He absolutely completes me.  He can make me laugh through the tears and promise that things will always get better when they're hard.  And we've had some hard times.  We have had so many joyous times also.  There is nobody that I would rather travel this journey with than him.

The second part: Something we like to do.

• Photography - I have such a passion for photography, and this year, I am going to work so hard on improving my photography and possibly turning it into a business for myself.  This is something that I really want to pursue with full force.  I am going to take classes, and do research, and shove my camera in everybody's face to try and get some practice.
• Blog - I really do enjoy blogging about my life and the things that happen.  I'll frequently look back and go, "Oh yeah!  I forgot that happened."  I am kind of a sucky blogger at times though.  Since this is something that I am professing that I like to do, I need to blog more frequently.
• Being surrounded by people - I like spending my time with people that I care about.  I have sort of turned into quite the hermit crab since my unfortunate dismissal from my place of employment.  But, I want to start venturing out and making new friends.  See part three on how I plan on achieving this.

The third part: Something to look forward to.

• Here's hoping I get pregnant very, very soon so that I can look forward to the healthy birth of our child.  That would be the best thing to look forward to.
• I'm going to work on building my faith.  I want to go back to attending church regularly.  I want to join a Bible study group.  I'm looking forward to growing closer to God.  I'm looking forward to making new friends who are building their relationships with God also.
• Vacations and road trips.  I love being able to get out of town for awhile.  Even if it's just for one night, I always feel so refreshed afterwards.  It's difficult for us to make any sort of far-in-advanced vacation plans due to my endometriosis and fertility treatments, but I would love if we could make more of an effort to make some plans, even if it's just for one night or for a day trip.

Seems easy enough, right.  Three simple things that are required to measure our happiness.  Are you happy?