True Happiness

I have been thinking, what really is true HAPPINESS? What makes a man or a woman really happy? Is it the luxury they surround themselves with or the accolades they get for their achievements or the relationships they have built their lives on? What really is true happiness?

Often times, we think accumulating wealth brings happiness into our lives, even though we do it at the expense of other people’s joy. We think, if we can work hard enough to get to the top¸ we would be recognized by people and given several awards for our achievements. We think by all these, we would be happy.

I can imagine the girl who has built her life around a guy she thinks is God fearing, noble and humble, but gets heartbroken by this same guy who told her he could die for her. She is left in the desperation of her true self, wondering where the ‘happiness’ she thought she had had gone. I thought loving him and giving myself to him would make me happy? Where is the Happiness she cries!!! Oh it’s gone she discovers, Wow, I thought it was everlasting, she asks? And nature replies “You can only find true happiness from within and not without”

Friends, the truth is, all your money, your assets, all you’ve worked for in life, and all the external things you thought could make you happy can be gone in a twinkle of an eye. Once a man begins to believe that happiness can be gotten from the “external,” a life of depression takes on him, because he is caught up in the wonder of wanting to preserve while paying less attention to what goes on inside of him.

Your inside as we know produces your outside. It reminds me of the two Chinese men who during the great depression lost everything they had worked for. Four hours after the news of their misfortune, they went ahead to play golf. One may think these men were stupid, but the truth is they learnt not to build their lives on what can be seen but rather on the unseen, which is their inner self. And guess what, they rose again and became better than they were. Their secret was in the content of their hearts and reproducing themselves in others.

All the dissatisfaction you feel is really nothing more than your best life—your destiny knocking at the door of your current life. The ache you feel in your inner core is your spirit telling you to wake up and get back on track—to become congruent and authentic and be the person that you truly are. As Hermann Hesse wrote ‘Each man has only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself- the very purpose for which God created you and that is true happiness.

Finally, when you become comfortable with yourself, you will realize you don’t need a crowd to make you happy.