Happiness is not that hard to achieve

In Pope John XXIII’s “daily decalogue”:

Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.

But most people think differently, especially in China. There is a measurement of happiness called happiness index. Chinese scores very low in the index, which implies that Chinese are the most unhappy people in the planet. It is quite easy to understand that though. The pressure for living in China is quite high. Education, medication, employeement, housing and living in general all seem to be quite hard in this most populous country. People eke out to make their ends meet.

I admit that life is hard, but is life that hard ? We are quite short-sighted when we are looking at ourself in the real life. Human being is greedy. We desire things we don’t have. Consequently what we always think about is what we don’t have not that has already been in our possession. We want more money, bigger house, luxary car, higher position in the company, pretty wife or rich husband. Whereas we blindside ourselves over what is within our arm’s reach. A small but cozy apartment, a plain looking but devoted wife, a husband lives on salary but gets bread back to home etc. I could give a much longer list, and you can too if you just sit back and think what you have instead of what you don’t.

Of course events will sometimes derail us. Of course we won’t get everything we desire. Of course there will be real tragedies and tragic-seeming setbacks. But we can be happy — joyful-down-underneath — even in the face of these things.

Life is often hard. But it’s not supposed to be that hard. There’s supposed to be room there for happiness and enjoyment, not in the notional future, but in the here-and-now.