Adar: Revealing and Living into our Truest Selves

It’s Adar. Be Happy, the tradition calls. This perhaps creates the impression that happiness is something we can easily turn on and off, something that is accessible at all times.

Our experiences teach us that happiness is much more complicated than that. Happiness comes and goes in a moment. Happiness changes into something else in a flash. Sometimes happiness is easily accessible, and at other times it remains elusive or completely out of reach.

The month of Adar calls us toward happiness by asking us to explore the deepest layers of our lives. It urges us to examine what we keep hidden and what we allow to be revealed. It asks us to wonder about what we hold onto because of fear and regret, and to imagine what would happen if we allowed ourselves to change, to be transformed.

Happiness, Adar suggests, comes from revealing and living into our truest selves—even though this is often challenging. Be happy, it’s Adar. Perhaps this means to be happy for the opportunity to ask ourselves how can we can live in more authentic relationship with ourselves and others.