Happiness

Each day is the first day of the rest of our lives and offers us the opportunity for a new start. We must learn to live each day to the fullest, and we can do that only if we learn to live in the present. Too many of us consider individual days as little more than stepping stones towards goals in the distant future. We think of them as rungs on a ladder that will move us a little closer to the top. That is no way to live our lives. What if we reach the top of the ladder only to realize that the ladder is against the wrong wall?

Happiness and success are journeys--not destinations--and we can never find happiness or success at the end of any road. Instead, we must travel a road where these conditions exist along the route every step of the way. If we can't find happiness and success in the present, we will never find them in the future. Those who find true happiness pursue the goal of achieving as much success, and finding as much happiness, as possible each and every day of their lives.

One of the great paradoxes of our time is that so many people seem to believe that the surest routes to happiness are the accumulation of material wealth and the attainment of social status. "If I can just become rich and famous, I will be truly happy," so many of us think. But life just doesn't work that way. Since the hunger for fame and fortune is never satisfied, the more fame or fortune a person attains, the more he or she craves.

We must find happiness within ourselves--not in the external world. For many people, happiness comes from the simple things in life and from trying to make others happy. Happiness is contagious, and the more of it we give to others the more we will have for ourselves. Each day we have a new opportunity to find happiness; and unless we are able to learn to be happy on a day-to-day basis, we will probably never find true happiness. Certainly there are times, such as after the loss of a loved one, when we are hurting so much that we cannot find happiness in the immediate future. But, during those periods when we have not recently suffered a major loss, all of us should be able to find at least some happiness in each and every day. If we can't, perhaps we are traveling the wrong road.

Source: Allen W. Smith