All our thoughts are centred on our own ideas of life. We only see what we wish to see. Most often we have already made up our minds about what we wish to see and we see things only how we want them to be. When we meet a person, we form a judgment about the person and then we collect facts in support of our judgement; facts in support are retained, others are rejected. We modify facts of our observation to suit our perception.  
 
Our preconceived notions of life distort our actual vision of what life is about. This leads to suffering. Children on the other hand have no fixed ideas about life or how it ought to be. They are therefore full of joy. They never take things for granted; everything is new for them; each sunrise, each tree and each flower. They are spontaneous, living fully in the moment. They see life as it is.  
 
A Zen master had to choose his successor. He called all his disciples together and drew a small black dot on a white board. He then asked his disciples to tell him what they saw. Almost all saw only the black dot. One disciple alone said: What I see is a huge expanse of white, in which there is a small black dot. He was chosen as the successor. The disciple chosen as the successor saw the whole picture as it was. The rest of the disciples saw just the black dot. They saw only the dot because of their preconception.  
 
We need to drop all our prejudices of others and ourselves, of events, time and places and live and enjoy life as it is. As long as happiness is bound by time and space, it does not last. Our perceptions limit us or liberate us based on whether we perceive things as they are or as we want them to be. All we need to do is to deal with things as they are.  
 
What we need is an internal cognitive shift: from seeing things as we want them to be seen to seeing things as they are, and enjoying life as it is. For this transformation to happen, we need to be in awareness all the time. If we are conscious of our thoughts and actions every moment, we will never slip into forming judgments. Meditation can bring tremendous awareness into us causing the cognitive shift to happen.  
 
Be blissful!