Choose Happiness

Why choose happiness when our natural tendency while facing adversity is to succumb to sadness, worry and misery!

I agree there is no dearth of reasons to make us sad and miserable. Analyzed properly you will see that life in general offers many more moments for our miseries than happiness. Almost anything can cause us sadness, even when something good happens since the worry of losing it will cause us to grieve in advance. I also feel that from deep within our genetic code we are pre-programmed to feel more sadness than joy through our life. So we can safely assume that sadness is our natural tendency and happiness is something that needs to be forced upon. Yet we all know that no one wants to be sad or miserable. We all want to be happy, yet almost no one is, at least not for long.

This calls for conscious proactive and continuous action. Therefore we must choose happiness and choose to be happy despite everything else. Happiness that is linked to something external; be it physical, emotional, or conceptual, will eventually lead to sadness since that causal factor would sooner or later go away. If a person brings you joy then for sure that person is going to go away one day and so with an object that you possess or a view that you enjoy like that of a sunrise or rainbow. For everything in this world is fleeting and momentary. Everything that has a beginning has an end too. Nothing is permanent and everlasting. But for the span of your life you can make an everlasting choice and that is to be happy. To replace a frown with a smile and to laugh instead of crying. Therefore my suggestion is to choose objective happiness without trying to attach it with a causation.

There’s actually nothing bad about sadness, except how it leaves us feeling empty, hopeless and at times suicidal. Perhaps sadness is necessary to cope up with loss, and happiness could be termed as living in self-denial, which psychologist strongly advice against. So everyone who has lost a loved one is recommended to grief. There perhaps is no other way of going around that. Yet at the end happiness should be opted over sadness.

Happiness literally leads to a healthier and fuller life and fills us up with optimism, hope and some amount of will to live. As long as we live, I think it is better to live happily most of the times. After all we actually have two options with which to face life’s situations with: a smile or tears and sorrow. Well there is ‘indifference’ too but that is only applicable to those of us who have become like Lao Tzu.

A smile is cheering and uplifting, tear is miserable and downcast. A smile takes far less physical effort than a frown (this is a scientific fact) and happiness fills us with hope while sadness leads us to hopelessness. Since we have only two options isn’t it better to opt for the one that is more beneficial and easier to adopt!  And that is my point.

Happy attitude will certainly not solve the issues by itself any more than sadness but the former will keep you in a better frame of mind to react and take actions.

I have an easy way to turn that sadness into happiness. Whenever I feel sad and miserable I look around towards the people who are in much more miserable state than I. And I start counting the blessings that my life has. Suddenly not only I feel better but I am also filled with compassion to do something positive for those who are in much worse condition. And in so doing I achieve an even higher sense of well being.

Easy formula to follow: when sad look at what all you have got instead of what you haven’t and you will start feeling better. Like someone once said: I was unhappy with my shoes till I met a man who did not have feet.