Happiness
What is the meaning of life? To be happy. Think about it. Even if there are things or situations in your life that aren’t very pleasant, you would still choose to be happy if given the choice. We all would. We all strive for happiness and we try to make it a reality whenever we can.
The secret of life, however, is learning how to be happy even when things aren’t going our way. We have to learn how to shift our perspective. It’s not easy. Bad things happen. We suffer. It is inevitable. Yet, we can either wallow in our pain, our suffering, our self-pity, or we can search for the silver lining. When we focus only on our pain, we don’t actually feel better. We feel worse. So only focusing on the negative doesn’t accomplish anything positive. However, once we start thinking about solutions to our pain, we start to feel better. We understand that there is a path out of the darkness, if we choose to follow it. Thinking of solutions is a positive step forward and one that can’t be completed if we only focus on our pain and suffering.
Yet, sometimes, our problems do not have solutions. What should we do then? This is when we really need to rely on shifting our perspective. This is the time when we can practice our compassion and our gratitude (areas in life that can enhance our own happiness when we practice them). Things can always be worse. As humans, we have the unique ability to imagine how much worse things could actually be, and we know that out there somewhere, there are others that do have it much worse. Now, the goal here is not to compare our suffering to others in a divisive way (my pain is worse than yours, I suffer more than you, etc) instead we should learn how to use our suffering to unite by developing our compassion. When we understand that others suffer just as we suffer, it helps to shift our perspective. Bad things aren’t just happening to me, bad things happen to everyone. We all suffer. We are not alone. In unity, we find strength. So in this unity we can lean on others who may have similar sufferings. Even if we don’t lean on others, we can at least practice our compassion. We know that our problems are similar to others’ problems around the world and we understand their pain, as they would understand ours. Just knowing that we are not alone, helps us to manage our pain better.
Finally we should also focus on our gratitude. Things may be bad, but there are still things in our lives that we are grateful for, or even potential good outcomes from our negative experiences. Let’s take an example of how all of these things (solutions, compassion, and gratitude) can be used to lessen our suffering: I lose my job and this causes a very tough financial burden for my family. Wallowing in self-pity won’t help me or them. I know there is a solution to this problem, find another job, so I start that process. Yet, I can also relieve my suffering by understanding that I am not the first or only person to have lost a job. Losing a job, does not make me a failure or a terrible person, it is just a bad situation, one that many others have also faced. I can find compassion for others who have also suffered this fate, by uniting my struggle with theirs. I don’t need to feel alone and isolated. And finally, I can focus on my gratitude. I lost my job, but I can spend a little more time with my family while I’m searching for a new one. Or I can learn a new skill or spend more time on a hobby. This doesn’t mean that my suffering has gone away or has been fixed, it just means I can shift my perspective to focus on things I have some control over that make me happy. My gratitude for the good things in my life can help me to dampen, or move past, my frustrations over the bad things.
In the end, we all want to be happy. Nobody sets out in life wanting to be miserable and to suffer. Yet, suffering is inevitable, such is the nature of life. We can’t control everything, but we can control our reactions to it. If we focus on the positives: we look for solutions, practice compassion, and rely on gratitude, we can at the very least lessen our pain and seek out a happier future. It isn’t easy, but it is doable, if we try.
(Side Note: I highly recommend The Book of Joy by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams. Please read it, for a much more elegant, in-depth, and engaging look at finding joy in life.)