Your happiness depends entirely on things going right

You have handed the keys to your joy over to circumstances — and a fool, who has been thrown from his donkey more times than he can count, has learned a thing or two about this. You have rented your joy to circumstances — letting events decide how you feel makes your happiness a hostage to fortune, forever at the mercy of things you cannot control, but joy can be partly cultivated within, in soil that circumstances cannot flood. Find the joys that do not depend on things going well — the sunset shines on good days and bad, a friend's laugh and a warm cup and a piece of music are available even when things go wrong, so build a store of delights that do not need the day to cooperate. And you can meet a bad day with more than misery — the fall is fortune's, but the laugh is yours, so cultivate how you meet what happens, for that inner freedom is where a joy independent of circumstances lives. What kind of day makes your happiness collapse?