A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 66

A stage is somewhere you arrive; a state is something you hold. Innocent moves happiness from the first to the second, which means it stops waiting on your circumstances to improve. You can be happy at whatever stage you are at — even one you dislike and are working to change. Wanting a different life and being happy in this one stop being opposites.

He found this by returning to a place he had left miserable, and being glad to be back. What he had actually lost the first time wasn’t the place; it was security, the freedom to express himself, a sense of progress. The same rooms later became “a pleasant reminder of my progress.”

So happiness turns less on where you are than on what you make of where you are. Hope for a better day motivates and inspires, but “what makes you happy is your own mentality.”