Happiness Poem by David Oluwatobi Akinola

I planted beside the waters of friendship,
Trust and loyalty,
But reaped betrayals and disappointments.

I cultivated the lands of relationships,
Planting commitment, love, care and passion,
But reaped neglects, hatred, deceit and pain.

I tilled the soils of solitude,
Scattering seeds of self-centeredness and greed,
But like a man groping for a pin in the dark, I reaped nothing.

I got fed up and looked at my scraggy self,
I laughed and wondered what was funny,
My house was empty and so was my tummy.

In the thick forest of thoughts,
In the lands of my empty heart I ploughed
Scattering seeds of endurance, courage, self-belief and happiness,
they all yielded trees of achievements, grasses of riches, shrubs of fame,
except happiness yielding nothing but sunflowers of happiness.

Friends can betray and dissapoint,
loved ones may not give us in return all the love and care we give them,
causing us pain and sadness,
but in ourselves lies a vast space of land where we can cultivate;
we have to plant happiness in ourselves, even then,
Like a sunflower, unless the sun is up it doesn’t reveals its beauty,
so is no man happy except he chooses to be.