Elusive Happiness

Heard today from the friends from New Orleans who are staying in Baton Rouge. They had initially expected to return home by next weekend, but are being told it may be two months before the water can be pumped from the city and electricity restored. They are fortunate to be where they are and have a place to stay. So many others are not.

Also heard at last about the friends in Biloxi. They are living on the second floor of their house because of flood waters, but have no electricity or running water. They hope to go stay with other friends for awhile, but purchasing gasoline is quite difficult.

All the news reports and video clips coming from the huricane disaster help remind me that when I think I have difficulties, there are always others who have it much worse. My heart goes out to the people "trapped" in the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center.

Even though my own difficulties seem petty by comparison, they still tend to interfere with my comfort-level, and thus my level of happiness. But I wonder if we bring unhappiness upon ourselves. I mean, I see people who hold onto unpleasant, miserable things that happen in their lives and who just can't seem to get over them. Can't let go. They just keep brooding. And then they make everyone around them miserable, too.

Author Oscar Lukefahr says in his book, The Search for Happiness that "Happiness should be as natural to us as breathing." So why isn't it? Why do we expend so much energy for so much of our lives trying to pursue happiness? Why can't we be satisfied with what we've got and who we are?

Our consumeristic society seems programmed to make us believe that having more things (read: spending more money) will make us happier. Well, that keeps the economy going, but does having more things really make us happy? Or does it just make us want even more things as we grow bored with what we already have?

As examples Lukefahr compares Princess Diana, who could have had just about any thing she wanted, with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who owned only two sets of clothing. Yet, as he points out, "Princess Diana's life was clouded with unhappiness. Mother Teresa radiated joy."

A little later he states:

It is easy to be unhappy. It takes no courage, no effort. Real worth comes from striving to be happy, from rejecting self-pity and the "feeling-good-feeling-bad" attitudes that bring misery to ourselves and others. We are at our best as human beings when we realize that happiness is largely under our control. Great souls understand that they have no right to wallow in woe, because this makes others miserable.

The lesson is this: being happy is mainly up to ourselves. No one else and nothing else can make us happy. If you're not happy, only you can do something about it.