Happiness cannot be bought or sold. It’s a feeling, the invisible force flowing through everything. 

It’s there when you’re sitting in your friend’s basement and everything feels so right that nothing can bring you down. 

But then that one thing happens. 

The one thing you knew couldn’t happen. 

The one thing that would ruin everything. 

The invisible force is sucked out of the room and you’re stuck with a pit in your stomach yearning to feel the sense of nostalgia and kilig, but it never returns.

Blame it on social media, unrealistic role models or just having too much time on their hands and just overthinking everything; this generation’s happiness is measured through the mask they wear when they walk through the hallways, social media posts or how they present themselves. 

You can act like the quirky main character, sitting in the library, the football player partying after the Friday night lights turn off, or the newspaper editor staying up all night to write the perfect column the night before publication. 

It doesn’t matter, because, underneath the societal standings and social classes, the three of them are the same. 

All caught on the sad moments in life when they feel alone.  

“Now, look, this is a sad moment right here. For all of us. And there ain’t nothing I can say, standing in front of you right now, that can take that away. But please do me this favor, will you? Lift your heads up and look around this locker room. Yeah? Look at everybody else in here. And I want you to be grateful that you’re going through this sad moment with all these other folks. Because I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad, and that is being alone and being sad. Ain’t nobody in this room alone,” (“Ted Lasso” 2019).

The sad moments are the ones we get hung up on but it’s not the moments we hold on to.  

The happy memories are the ones we cherish and hold close so that in the darkest chapters of our lives we can look back upon the moments that the invisible force of happiness was surrounding us. 

The people around you and here with you. 

There aren’t really social classes in high school, enemies among peers and divisions so strong it tears schools apart.

So you can act like the quirky main character, dressed in the newest trends, the football player scoring the game-winning touchdown, or the newspaper editor writing opinions about the world. 

It. 

Doesn’t. 

Matter.

Happiness cannot be bought or sold. It’s a feeling, an invisible force flowing through everything. 

It’s there the moment when you’re sitting in your friend’s basement and everything feels so right and then you lock eyes with someone across the room. 

Your stomach twists with kilig (I like that word so I’m using it again) and you feel the invisible force, stronger than before. 

You know it’s going to be alright.

Teenagers are never really alone and it’s about time they understand that.

“Ted Lasso” really just takes the cake with this. 

“If you care about someone, and you have a little love in your heart, there ain’t nothing you can’t get through together,” (“Ted Lasso” 2019).