Some thoughts on happiness

I want to be happy; you want to be happy, too.  And all of the people that we see each day--guess what?  They want to be happy, also.  We can contribute to the positive side of their world by offering them a smile and some positive words, or we can contribute to the negative side of their world by criticizing and speaking in anger or hatred.  But those are merely contributions.

Their own happiness depends upon their own perspectives--about what they see to be true, what the accept and what they let go of, what they desire and what they have.  While my negative words may hurt them, their happiness shouldn't be affected by my words.  I should be able to stay happy no matter what someone else says or does.  My happiness is in my own hands and my own heart.

Here are a few passages that address the concept of happiness.  Perhaps they can light a light inside of you that will allow you to see your happiness and feel it completely!

If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if
it were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among
human beings who are living richly and fully the good life.
If you observe really happy people you will find them
building a boat, writing a symphony, educating their children,
growing double dahlias in their gardens, or looking for
dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. They will not be searching
for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled
under the radiator. They will not be striving for it as a goal
in itself. They will have become aware that they are happy
in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.
To find happiness we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves.

W. Beran Wolfe

* * * * *
We may think that happiness is a result of happy circumstances.
A more mature view of happiness is that it is a by-product of
sharing our good and serving others.  It is a sense of doing a
job well, honest communication with another, visiting someone
who may be ill, or sharing a sense of humor.  Happiness is a
spiritual principle that we can lay hold of and use, regardless
of outer conditions or circumstances.
It isn't necessary to wait for circumstances to bring happiness.
When we try to give it to others, it returns to us multiplied.  We
can make our own joy, and let it act upon circumstances!  One
of the great paradoxes of truth is that a happy heart draws to
itself what it needs for happiness.

John Marks Templeton

* * * * *
As long as our self-identification centers around what we call the real
world, no profound happiness is possible.  Happiness requires that we
give up a worldly orientation--not worldly things but a worldly
attachment to things.  We have to surrender all outcomes.  We have
to live here but appreciate the joke.
   In order to become happy, we must become bigger than the worldly
self. . . . Just as children play games in which they pretend to be adults,
and thus pave the way for adulthood, so you and I must pretend to be
angelic, noble, enlightened spirits just visiting here,
in order to actually become them.

Marianne Williamson



Please have a great day!