In a rudimentary sense, happiness comes with success, power, money, luxury, etc. Or does it?
What defines happiness?
- Is someone with a smile on their face happy?
- Is someone with a lot of wealth happy?
- Is someone who is physically and mentally fit happy?
- Is someone popular happy?
The answer could be a yes or a no!
Imagine you are a one-year-old kid who at least to others seems to be happy if not for himself/herself.
What is a happy kid? I would say a healthy kid who is playful is happy. It’s as simple as that.
Now the question is why and how is the kid happy and why are all kids not happy?
Most of the kids are raised by their parents and no parents would raise them unwillingly.
Let us assume that you are one of the kids in a group of kids who are fed well and raised in a clean and healthy environment.
For any kid in that group, does a gloomy day make him or her less happy? or a hot sunny day, or if there is a flood in the city, or if no power is in the house for three straight days?
Would it make them less happy if no guest came to their house, or if their family is one of the most frequent hosts of house parties? No.
They are happy because they are mentally and physically able to be happy and they know when to be happy and when not.
Learning to Be Happy from Kids
We should learn from kids to be happy. Sadness for kids is when they see things they don’t admire or do not see things they admire. This for adults is manageable and we do that daily.
But when it comes to happiness, we turn a blind eye and deaf ears to the reasons around us and tend to look for things that are beyond. This tendency to look for things that are beyond our reach and disregard the things we have makes us unhappy in the present.
An unhappy present can never deliver a happy future.
The desire to own things makes happiness so elusive.
Happiness is not rare or elusive but the way we seek happiness makes it so.