Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
— Marcus Aurelius
We are all caught in the maze of chasing fame and fortune and, of course, power, in whatever form we can attain it. We carry a delusory hope that it will provide us lasting and wholesome happiness. But, fortunately, happiness does not rest in anyone’s hands but in our own. Happiness is not found over the rainbow or in some mythical place. It’s around the corner, dancing down the street waiting to alight on someone eager to welcome it.
Looking for happiness through accumulation of material things is like trying to catch your own shadow. The closer you move towards it, the farther it moves away from you. All one has to do is catch hold of one’s self and the shadow will be caught. Plato feels that the happiest life is one in which each part of the soul performs its function with complete excellence, or to the highest degree. His mentor and teacher Socrates recommended harmonising the different parts of the soul. Doing so, he believed, would produce a divine-like state of inner tranquility. He used to walk in affluent streets and gaze at the windows of luxurious shops. When asked by a passer-by why he repeatedly did so when he did not even have decent clothes, he went on to say that he did it to remind himself of how happy he was despite not having any of those things.
We can all generate our own good feelings by the way we react to what is around us. It has to be cultivated in our hearts and minds. It cannot be sought in the world around us; it has to be discovered in one’s inward self. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “Happiness is not a goal; it’s a byproduct of a life well lived.” John Rockefeller reiterates these same values: “The road to happiness lies in two simple principles… find what it is that interests you and you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it, every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.”
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “It is difficult to find happiness within but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.” Anne Frank says happiness has much to do with our own outlook: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens… but often we look so long at the closed door, that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
Happiness is always guaranteed when we confer it on others. It can never be had by seeking. It comes almost as a kind of benediction on the full, caring, loving and interested life. We must learn through love to get subsumed in the world and be a humble part of it. It is through such an engagement with one’s self, the world and reality that will enable us to achieve a transcendental happiness. As Oliver Wendell Holmes emphasises, “Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.”
