Thich Nhat Hanh
“Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Happiness is a feeling of being content when life is in a constant process of satisfying our needs. It is happiness which fills our empty lives with its fragrance and outshining our souls with its melody.
As humans, we all strive for happiness. While some look for it in gaining materialistic goods, some others seek it by dwelling in the deep corners of the earth. And many others validate it on getting a perfect partner, outstanding marks and immeasurable degrees and qualifications. It is ingrained in human nature that to gain something we need to look for it far and wide, by slogging for it day and night. Sometimes, some things in life are just an arm’s length; all we need to do is to make an effort to take it. But we fail to even take notice of it.
In times when everything is quantified and measured based on its value and intensity, happiness too has become prey to this. It is felt only if it weighs according to our set standards. When we feel it is a meager sum, we nullify it thinking it as invalid. Unfortunately, mankind is so busy gaining papers of currency that it has lost the understanding of true happiness. Nothing is wrong with the world, everything is fine, just that nobody is happy. At various crossroads of life, we come across myriad kinds of experiences and events which end up shaping us for the rest of our lives. When times are happy, there come days filled with trials and tribulations. It’s rightly said that every sunrise has to face sunsets and every night brings a hope of a new dawn. Happiness, however, is free of any such kind of intricacies.
Happiness is a choice which men of optimism hold dear to their hearts of armour, which they forever guard it, be it joy or gloom. For they are the ones who understood that a smiling face and a heartfelt laughter don’t wait for reasons and results. Happiness with sources is huge but happiness without a source is as deep as the ocean which knows no boundaries.
In a world filled with pathologies, disabilities, injustice, inequality and dystopian tendencies, it is happiness alone which can rise above, on the altar by its virtue of sacrifice, love, harmony, and equality to spread the light of its optimism and faith.
As beings of intellectual capacities, it is without reasons and sources that we need to learn to smile in spite of the storm raging within not because we are too strong to hide our pain away but because life is too short to fret and cry on the same things over and over again.
Don’t worry. Be happy! 🙂
So beautiful and practical lines…
May Allah grant us the wisdom and heart to follow this idea of no reason to be happy…
Just be happy.?