Good Idea for a Happy Life
Happiness is subjective, thus has no constant definition, everyone has their own rightful idea of what it means to be happy, this may be motivated by a religious/spiritual goal or a more mundane target, for many the concept of happiness invariably revolves around money.
Over the years many teachers and philosophers have examined this idea of happiness, teaching that the concept of happiness is mental, you do not need material to be happy, happiness is created rather than stumbled on. They teach us to look within ourselves and find happiness and when we do, we must nurture it to make it grow and give shade to the world.
But what does it mean to be happy?
How can we explain the feeling that comes over us, we are relaxed and filled with smiles, we see life positively and are filled with energy. Happiness is indeed a strange fellow, throughout my life, profound experiences with it has imprinted indelible lessons in me.
As a young boy from a middle income family, life was not necessarily hard but we did not always get everything we wanted. Although I was only a child of about 4 – 9 years, I felt satisfaction, I was happy and my family was happy. This was my first conscious experience with happiness; I can still remember how we sat around and shared jokes, everyone laughing heartily.
We had happiness, inexpensive and quick to summon. Happiness is about the meaning of the moment to you, it is about how much we value our experience at that moment, so as much as a person may find happiness in wealth another may find it without spending a dime. It is bought with the heart not physical money.
Another of my experiences with happiness came watching football match. The team we were all (at least a majority of us) supported scored a winning goal in a very competitive match, the cinema burst into screams, people from every corner of the room, shouting and celebrating with each other, completely letting go of attachments they clung on to moments earlier.
This experience was particularly important because the cinema was filled with groups of different religious affiliations, who did not see eye to eye, heated confrontations days earlier had put the town on the brink of battle. But here, in a chocked, smelly room, far, far, far away from all the splendid religious centres, they found it, the one thing that years in these splendid centres did not give them, peace.
Happiness momentarily brought sworn enemies to handshakes and hugs. I really understood then, the pettiness of some our most treasured stances. We are frequently blinded by the darkness as we dig through the tunnel of life; happiness is a spark in this tunnel, an opportunity for us to see our surroundings, progress, mistakes and the way forward.
The most successful and productive people in the world take advantage of this spark, adjusting themselves and finding motivation to dig on in this tunnel of life. My idea of a happy life is one in which we all learn to think as these productive and successful people do.
