Have you ever worried about happiness?

        Have you ever made an effort to achieve it?

        Who amongst us does not wish to be happy? Apart from pathologic cases, people are always searching for happiness, even if they do not realize it.

        But what exactly is happiness?

        The meaning of happiness changes from person to person, and in each moment of our lives, it can assume different aspects.

        When we are ill, recovering would mean happiness. And we put all our efforts together to achieve it.

        If we are unemployed, a job will constitute happiness, at least for a while.

        If we are single and would like to be with someone, our happiness would be to meet the right person to share our lives with.

        However, the ones that are cold or hungry would find happiness in a warm blanket or in being fed.

        For a football fan, the explosion of happiness happens when the ball gets inside the adversary’s goal.

        Happiness has as many faces as the wishes of each creature, varying according to the circumstances.

        Once I read a story that made me reflect about in what real felicity consists.

        It was told by a girl who was momentarily unhappy, and walking down the road, saw a man pulling a cart.

        As she observed that scene, she thought: Poor man, he’s doing the job of an irrational animal...

        This must be the ultimate unhappiness!

        Thinking she was going to hear moans and complains she got next to the man and asked:

        You must be very unhappy, aren’t you? Doing a job like this…

        She had to confess that the man made her mood change, when he answered enthusiastically:

        No madam, I am a very happy person! I am so healthy that I don’t even need an animal to pull my cart…

        I am strong, I work strolling around the city and nice people like you salute me.

        The only reason I’m not happier is that I don’t see everyone in the world smiling…

* * *

        As we can perceive, happiness consist in each of us being satisfied with what we have to do, and to make our own contentment other people’s joy.

        When Jesus said that happiness was not from this world, He meant flawless happiness, absolute happiness.

        However, we can live with joy valorising what we have and the moral values we have achieved already, without being unhappy for not having what is not within our reach.

* * *

        Many of us look for happiness far from where it is.

        Each moment God offers us a thousand reasons to be happy.

        The opportunity of living, of having a family and friends, the opportunity to work…

        Nature, the sun, the rain, the restful night, the chances of learning each and every moment.

        Even the troubles in our way are reasons for joy, because they teach us how to get over them, preparing ourselves to the conquest of eternal happiness that waits for all of us, after getting over the natural obstacles of our lives.

Spiritist Moment Team, based on story published in Jornal Caridade,
de may/june 1997, page 3.