THE COST OF HAPPINESS
“Happiness is not something ready-made. it comes from your own actions”- Dalai Lama
I have been wondering for sometime now what happiness truly means. This perhaps may be from my discovery that we all keep chasing after this thing called “Happiness” and most times on our dying beds realize how sad and miserable we have become.
I have taken some time to ask many people what their aspirations in life are and almost every one gave me the same response though in different forms – “I just want to be happy” so I ask, what have we been doing all these years, if we are still trying to be happy? Is happiness a journey or a destination? A process or a finished product?
Is happiness attainable in a world driven and consumed by materialism? Is it something intrinsic or extrinsic? Why do many people when they feel they have achieved their dreams and are happy, get suddenly hit by a disease, ailment or death of a loved one? is true happiness a myth or an illusion?
Let me share with you extracts of what happiness means to two of my friends
“……….So in summary, I will say happiness is how satisfied you are with your life and the good you feel on day to day basis” – Emmanuel Raji
“Happiness to me is having a fulfilled life. A life gracefully and carefully prepared for us by the holy spirit” – Chris Iye Ushie.
I would like you to pause and try to remember those times or days you really felt happy and try to answer the following questions
1) What brought you happiness
2) Does that “thing” still cause you happiness till date
3) Was it short-lived?
4) Can you add your definition of happiness above.
Now, if you have ever experienced true happiness, at what cost did it come? and if you are still in search of happiness, how far are you willing to go to find it?
Many of us seek happiness and joy in wealth and material things, many derive so much happiness in credit alerts and account balances (Don’t worry, its a Nigerian thing).
“When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever vanity fair has to offer. In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem like pure fantasy, what pascal called “Licking the earth”- Malcom Muggeridge.
Do you in any way see your definition of Happiness in Malcom’s submission above? if your answer is YES, then I would suggest you re-define what happiness means to you.
I see happiness in helping people find their voice. Happiness to me is the summation of every positive thing that every other person defines it to be, in addition to the most important of them all “SERVICE ABOVE SELF”
Happiness is as succinctly captured by Albert Schweitzer – In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
I urge you today to try living my definition of Happiness by rekindling someone else’s inner spirit. by being the reason someone smiles, by giving hope to the hopeless.
As we celebrate the Joy of the resurrection, please remember that “You have not done enough, you have never done enough so long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute”- Dag Hammarskjold.
Think. Create. Grow.
