Peace, Love, and Happiness - Part 3

OK, on a scale of 1 to 10, honestly rank how happy you are with your life right now. Be honest. I won’t ask for your answer later. Me? Well, I’d say that my life sets at about a 6-7. I’m shooting for 9-10 and I’m working on it every day. So, what is it about your life that makes you happy? Do you have lots of stuff? A nice car? A boat? A house in the hills? If you are like most people, you based your “happiness factor” on the things that you have that you feel you really wanted. After all, we are a Consumer Nation, right? “He who dies with the most toys wins!” Isn’t that the American motto?

Last year alone, we, the people, spent over $8,000,000,000,000.00 on stuff. That’s right; we spent $8 TRILLION on stuff in 2007. Any guess as to how much we, the people, earned? If you guessed lower, you win! We earned a little over $7,800,000,000,000.00. Now, basic math tells us that we are in the hole. But we got a lot of toys!!

So, we’re a happy country, right? Take a look around and tell me what you think. I think that we are a nation of angry, unhealthy, stressed out time bombs, just waiting to go off. But we got a lot of toys!! We’ve created the term “road rage” and use it as an excuse to beat each other to death in a traffic jam. We have more medications, for more illnesses, than ever before. Depression and stress are at an all time high. Violence and divorce are almost a way of life. And most everyone is simply miserable.

Why? We have more than almost every other country in the world! We throw away more food than some entire countries have. We have just about everything in an excess that is almost obscene. Everything, that is but the three most important things. Peace, Love, and Happiness.

So, we talked about Peace and we talked about Love. Let’s give a moment to Happiness.

Happiness is a nice nebulous concept. Everyone defines it differently. It’s like nailing Jell-o to the wall. Webster’s defines happiness as: a state of well-being and contentment. There, doesn’t that just tell you everything you needed to know about Happiness? Now go on…go be Happy. :-)

Well-being and contentment? That sounds like me right after Thanksgiving dinner! That’s not Happiness. Not even close. (Who IS this guy Webster anyways?) Just like knowing Peace and Love, Happiness comes from the inside. Go ahead, try being happy when you’re broken hearted. It’s just not possible. Why? Because Happiness is a state of the Heart. It’s not a condition of the mind or a symptom of the body. It has everything to do with your Heart.

OK…so I hear you all out there saying…”Alright smartass. How do we get to be happy then?” I know, I’ve taken away all your stuff and asked you to be happy. I’ve told you that you can’t think your way into Happiness, any more than you can exercise your way into Happiness. I believe that Happiness is not so much as something you can get, but rather a way of living. It is really the result of gaining Peace and Love in your life. It’s hard to NOT be happy when your life is full of Peace, no matter what happens and you live in Love with yourself and others.

So, how can you start on the road to Happiness? It’s easy. Work on Peace and Love. And put a smile on your face. Give it a try and see how different you feel when you wear a smile all day long. People will smile back and those that spend time around you will be uplifted and respond in kind. It won’t bring you true Happiness, but it will help get you going in the right direction.

I want to share the greatest treasures in my life with you all. Peace, Love and Happiness. I’ll close with words from someone wiser than I, the Dalai Lama, who said:

“The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.”

Yeah…he gets it too.