What is happiness?
Despite all the technological advances we have made, happiness seems to elude most of us.
The worst thing is that many of us do not even know what happiness is.
Sometime back, I got the opportunity to read Masaru Emoto’s “controversial book”, The Hidden Messages in Water. All the controversies aside, the beginning pages of the book lists three conditions of symptoms of happiness
Do you have
- A sense of peace in your heart?
- A feeling of security about your future?
- And a feeling of anticipation when you wake up in the morning?
I feel that these three are very simple yet very powerful thoughts.
Perhaps it is the second that is the most critical. With all the confusion and doubts around us, if one can feel secure about the future then perhaps numbers 3 and 1 will fall into place automatically.
We tend to get unnecessarily insecure about our future even though, living in the western countries, we have a certain amount of financial security. As well, in most countries there is adequate healthcare which helps us to prevent illnesses or, when something has been detected, to handle it to a certain extent.
While one cannot dismiss the sense of insecurity in a fast-changing world we could also be more at peace, and realize that we cannot prevent all the calamities but there are some we can prevent and some we can handle even if it is going to take a lot of effort and put a dent on our financial and health well-being. Perfect financial and health security is not a must for happiness.