
You know you are okay when you are okay being alone with your joy. This joy that I have, the world did not give it and the world can't take it away.
This joy of mine comes recognizing that no one else can make me happy. Others can enhance my happiness, can make me feel happier, can even bring levity to my existing happiness. But never ever can someone else create my happiness. Having joy is an inside out thing. It originates inside our spirit and is dependent on inside attention to detail not outside attention to keep it alive. When we forget this for even a short while we fall victim to the possibilities of being manipulated and led down a path where joy is doled out and entered into barter. If you do this, I will do that. If you behave in this way, share in this way, ask in this way, conduct yourself in this way, dress in this way, give in this way, then I will give you those things that make you happy. We start to see our situations in terms of what joy we can negotiate from it. What joy we can skim off the surface and be okay with. Our joyful expectations become diminished, often extremely watered down.
Looking back on it, when the trouble came we were looking the wrong way. We were looking outward for worldly answers to joy not inward. John 16:24 - Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.