Searching for Happiness?Searching for Happiness?
Do you feel like you are not enjoying life as much as you should? Are you searching for that elusive feeling of happiness? Is ‘happiness’ your goal? If so, you maybe taking the wrong approach. Consider what Albert Camus said, ‘you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.’
| We
never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction. - Pierre Coneille |
Wilford Grenfell says ‘real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile’. There is also a Hungarian proverb that says ‘when ambition ends, happiness begins’. Is your ambition to achieve 'happiness' actually preventing you from ‘finding’ the happiness you crave?
| It
is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. - Agnes Repplier |
Sometimes we must make a tough
decision that will not create happiness for us, but it is the right thing to
do. If you make ‘happiness’ your goal, your decision process
may be influenced by how this decision will impact your personal happiness,
which may not be consistent with what should be done.
Happiness is a by-product of the other things we do in our lives. If your search has not been successful, perhaps you should examine what you are doing with your life. What is your ambition?
Instead of pursuing happiness, try doing something to serve your fellow man. It couldn't hurt - and who knows, it just might create that happiness you are trying to find.
- Joe Freeman
| Happiness in this world,
when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. - Nathaniel Hawthorne |