Countless movies and stories have been made showing a Holy Man of curious stature who seems to innately know some things which we will never be privy to ourselves. He moves through the world around him with a confident demeanor which signals to us a kind of clandestine sensory message, informing us that he is one of the lucky ones. He is an heir to the rewards extended to all natives of the good side of the tracks of life, while we are confined to the desolate side of a nearly unsurmountable divide which separates us from his higher caliber of world. We are stuck breathing in the exhaust he leaves in his wake as we are forced to face the realization that we are one of the unlucky ones. We feel as though we are unable to alter the immutably disadvantageus position in life in which we have been predestined to dwell. We are confronted with the frustration of watching him pass by us within his ineffable majesty; the man who has the freedom to fly up and over us with carte blanche to go anywhere he so chooses. How can we become like him? What makes him so special? What does he know?
One morning, a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door with Bibles in hand and asked me what I thought the biggest problem in the world is today. Put on the spot, I quickly considered their question and said “It’s people not knowing how to enjoy themselves.” I immediately envisioned the myriad of poor souls in this world who run around taking drugs or drinking alcoholic liquids to excess in some waterfront bar or spend their entire lives worrying from moment to moment about how they can aquire the most money possible until they suddendly realize they have run out of moments from their life-bank to misappropriate. Do any of these individuals remind you of yourself? After I gave that answer to them that morning I decided to figure out what truly comprises the path to happiness.
We are all running around in a world, not of our preferred design, trying to insure that the next few moments will be happier than the last few moments. Is this happiness? I must admit I personally believe that an unhappy life doesn’t really qualify as quality time. In that respect, my own vision of a respectable life tends to be quite hedonistic; I’ll make no bones about it. My position is we have a God-given right to pursue happiness and comfort without considering that quest inherently sinful unless you steal someone else’s chances to be happy in the process.
Isn’t there some obvious truth in play, though, that some truth seems to be so self-evident when we see so many individuals of whom we are so envious to be the happiest among us, in fact live the most miserable lives of all; the billionaire who can’t rest peacefully or the famous actress who can’t make a move throughout the world without a paid bodyguard whom she can’t stand at her side? And why do we so often drop the ball on our run for our own happiness? Did we maybe do something so wrong at some point, perhaps by allowing our unbridled callouseness and indifference to so conveniently blind us that we are, in return, denied the prize of true happiness as a penance? The answer is “no”. So many of us have simply lost our way and the first step to getting back on course is to realize that we are indeed so very lost.
It isn’t what we don’t know that keeps us from being like that charismatic Wise Man, it’s what we forgot.
Did you ever feel as if you have forgotten to take care of some basic, crucial thing a long time ago which we skipped over and buried and never got back too? Part of us will never be able to move forward constructively in life, and that nagging feeling that we’re doing it all wrong now without having fixed that forgotten issue we never dealt with can drive us to do some whacky things. Our misery is born of pure confusion.
Why did we have to burn the treasure map in exchange for a greasy road map showing the path to “Maturity” butfound out it only led us to growing old and weak instead?
That Holy Man, he knows the SECRETS OF HAPPINESS and that, dear reader, is what we forgot to deal with so long ago. That’s why part of us can never move on with confidence until we go back and fix it. I shall now tell you the first Secret of Happiness.
THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS IS TO DECIDE TO BE HAPPY.
Sorry if that wasn’t the momentous reveal which you were expecting. I’m not saying it’s easy, but that’s the most expedient path to a resolution.
When you were a child without any money to spend, you were forced to look at the world around you in all of its simple, all of its complex and very much profound wonder instead of buying something you thought would make you so happy, and you decided to be happy because, in the very least, you saw a whole life of unbounded poossibilities ahead of you and those wonders would just keep-a- comin’.
At some point, we have forgotten that the best things in life truly ARE free, as the cliche proclaims. How can we get this state of mind back? Simply decide to be happy, and don’t deny someone else their own happiness in pursuit of the prize. It’s a delicate piece of orchestration.
Start looking at the world around you again with the eyes of a child and try being grateful, for a change, for all that you DO have at your fingertips now, rather than choose to feel the repugnance of wallowing in your perceived penury. Life truly is defined by the way you look at it. Instead of worrying about losing a dime, give the crying child next to you, who’s mother can’t pay for a candy bar, a dollar. You will find out why it truly is better to give than receive. You will start to be happy again.
Someone smarter than I put it another way: “THE SECRET TO BEING HAPPY IS TO NEVER WANT SOMETHING YOU CAN’T HAVE.” and that is, indeed, another way of saying that your life is formed out of the context from which you choose to view it. So that, then, is the second secret to living a happy life.
No matter how much stuff you manage to aquire as you use up those limited moments, nor how much you convince yourself that you are ahead of the game and entitled to the best of the best of whatever goes around, the more you buy into this ideal of a material and status-based happiness, the more you’ll never be as happy as a small, hopelessly poor helpless baby is on the beach who is marveling at the warmth of the sand and the rythm of the waves for their first time. If you taint your own time on the beach with worry about losing that dime again and “wasting” the day there when you could be making money in a bull pen somewhere calling out stock numbers, you are losing the moment as well as the dime. You need to decide to become again as happy as you were when you had no other choices.
I once had a motorcycle and I couldn’t resist adorning it with a frame around its license plate which read “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.”
It’s time we all ignored the BS script we get laid down in front of us and decide to be happy.
-PoorGina
A Life Less Narrow 