Is it even possible to feel happy & fulfilled? We often ask ourselves this question and we spend our whole life looking for it. We work to find happiness. We pray to God to give us the happiness, We expect our partners, husbands or children to make us happy. All our lives, we are searching for this happiness thing.
But where is it? It is nowhere to be seen. The harder we try, the more we struggle to find happiness.
We say to ourselves, when I will earn this much money, I will be happy!
After I pass this exam, I will have nothing to worry about and will ultimately be happy!
When I have lost all my excess weight, I will become happy!
When I will buy that new car, I will be extremely happy!
I will be happy living in a huge mansion!
I will attain ultimate happiness when my child goes to a prestigious University!
I will be happy when I will have grandchildren!
and the list goes on…
We drive ourselves to achieve all of those things and when we get there, we are not happy. We are not fulfilled. All our lives we are running after these things and before we know it, it’s all over for us. That one thing we searched for so diligently all our life, we couldn’t find it and now it’s time to go.
So How to be happy? is the hardest question to answer and the most difficult thing to find and realise in ones life.
Although the answer to this question believe it or not is already known.
It took one of the most brilliant minds to come up with the answer. His name was John Stewart Mill, an outstanding philosopher who believed to have had the highest IQ of any person who has ever lived.
John Stewart Mill said “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. On the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit followed not as a means but as itself an ideal end aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way”.
This is something that should be taught in schools.
If we seek happiness directly, it will delude us for ever. People can never be happy unless they break out of the tiny world of themselves. “So those only are happy who have their minds set on object other than their own happiness”. There in lies the secret.
I wish, I had found that out when I was growing up. I would not have like most of us, spent time being miserable.
We can find the examples of such people in our lives all around us if we really observe carefully. Not commonly but still in existence. Have you noticed how happy they are. They are a different breed. They do not get tired. They are busy doing things for others, helping others and happiness quietly finds them. I have been extremely fortunate to have known a few of them and learn from them, to be like them.
