“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
– Omar Khayyam
I have heard it said that we struggle to find happiness because of the very act of seeking it. This might sound crazy, but what I mean is, that if we make the pursuit of happiness a demand, something that we feel we must do, then the pressure of this demand can make us unhappy. The desire to be happy becomes twisted into a demand that we think we have to achieve. What we need to do instead is to create the conditions for happiness in our lives. This could be found in enjoying activities for their own sake, much like children do.
When we are engrossed is something we become one with the moment that we are in. There is no past or future, only the now, the moment we are in. When we are engaged in sporting activities, creative activities, good conversations, listening to a fantastic piece of music, we are lost in the moment, we are centred and content. We have all experienced glimpses of this and once we have had a taste of it we generally want more, and I think this fuels our pursuit of happiness.
The problem with life is that with the fantastic moments also come the sad and painful moments, moments that can make us feel that we may find it difficult to find happiness again, so we immerse ourselves in the pursuit of happiness in the world, when the answer is not in our experiences in the world, but in our understanding of those experiences. Happiness is found in how we view the world and all the people and things within it. It involves our beliefs and our opinions, and it involves letting go of our prejudices and judgements. It is a return to the oneness that we began life with.
When we are born experience is all one, there are no divisions. Our senses have not separated into sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste yet. But as we grow and learn and develop we begin to process our experiences into these five separate senses. We then divide up the world into categories, into positives and negatives for example, in order to understand it. This is how we get to understand everything around us, we categorise and label everything.
However, much of this we need to unlearn if we are to find happiness, because tied up in the polar opposites of how we understand the world are judgements and expectations, barriers that often divide people and cultures. When we are good then someone else must be bad. If we are right then someone has to be wrong. In every religion in the world there is mentioned the need to return to a oneness, perhaps the oneness from which we came.
Every living being has the right to be happy, but we should remember that it is OK to be happy with what we already have; we can be content with what we already have. So it can be helpful to think about what in our lives is just as we want it to be, what things don’t need changing, and whatever is left over can become things we aim to improve. Being aware of the good things in our lives first can make us more grateful, and therefore happier without trying to achieve happiness.
We could also set ourselves goals aimed at improving the lives of other people. This could be giving to charity or a food bank, it could be trying to make other people smile each day, whatever we can think of to help other people. In 2018 let us aim to make it a very good year for ourselves and all of those around us, because some of the best goals are those that enrich and improve the lives of other people.
As the Buddha said:
“An act to make another happy, inspires the other to make still another happy, and so happiness is aroused and abounds. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
The Fullfilment Project 