How to be happy, live longer, and remain joyous?
You cannot remain happy without the world around you. To be
happy is a fundamental aspect of life for a human being. If you are not
happy, what else can you do with your life? Only if you are happy, then can
other great possibilities open up. If you are concerned about the world, the
first thing you must do is transform yourself into a joyous being and make
others happy. Unless something of true value happens within you, you cannot do
anything of tremendous value to the world. So, if you are concerned about the
world, the first thing you must do is transform yourself into a joyous being.
It does not matter what you are pursuing in your life,
whether it is business, power, education, or service, you are doing so because
somewhere deep inside you is a feeling that this will bring you happiness.
Every single action that we perform on this planet springs from an aspiration
to be happy because it is the original nature. When you were a child you were
simply happy. That is your nature. The source of joy is within you; you can
take charge of it.
Today morning, did you see that the sun came up wonderfully
well? The flowers blossomed, no stars fell down, and the galaxies are
functioning very well. Everything is in order. The whole cosmos is happening
wonderfully well today but just a worm of a thought worming through your head
makes you believe it is a bad day today. This is so because you suffered today
at the hands of others around you. However, you must know that ‘suffering’ is
always there in life in many styles.
Life is about the creation that is here, knowing it
completely and experiencing it the way it is; and not distorting it at all the
way you want it to be. It has to be what it is and you have to adjust yourself
to it and not the environment to be adjusted to you. If you want to move into
existential reality, to put it very simply, you just have to see that what you
think is not important, what you feel is not important. What you think may have
nothing to do with reality. It has no great relevance to life. The mind is just
chattering away with nonsense that you have gathered from somewhere else. If
you think it is important, you will never look beyond that. So avoid thinking
about it in your way and adjust yourself to it.
Your attention naturally flows in the direction of whatever
you hold as important. If your thoughts and emotions are important to you, then
naturally your whole attention will be right there working on that. Suffering
is manufactured by the environment and the manufacturing unit is in your mind. It
is time to shut down the manufacturing unit. Do not create suffering and let things go whatever happened at your hands intentionally or unintentionally;
or that whatever happened at the hands of others. It must be acknowledged as
part of a cycle of life.
Today we are seeking happiness so strongly that the very
life of the planet is being threatened. Don’t be in pursuit of happiness. Know
how to express your happiness in the world. If you look back at your life and
see, the most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing
your joy, not when you were/ are seeking it.
What you save will never be your quality. What you dispense
will be your quality. If you save your joy, at the end of your life no one will
take into account, “She saved every bit of joy in her; she’s the most joyfully
dead.” They will say, “This horrible creature never even smiled in her life.”
But if every day you dispensed your joy and love, people would say, “Oh she was
a joyful and loving being.”
When you get up in the morning, the first thing you should
do is smile. At whom? No one. Because just the fact that you woke up is not a
small thing. So many millions of people who slept last night did not wake up
today, but you and me woke up. Isn’t it great that you woke up? So smile
because you woke up. Then look around and if there is someone, smile at them.
For so many people, someone dear to them did not wake up today morning.
Everyone who is dear to you woke up – Wow! It’s a great day, isn’t it? Then go
out and take a look at the trees. They didn’t die last night either.
You may think this is ridiculous, but you will know the
reality of it when someone dear to you doesn’t wake up. Don’t wait till then to
realize the value of it. It is not something ridiculous, this is the most
valuable thing that you are alive and everything that matters to you is alive.
When on this disastrous night so many people did not wake up and the loved ones
of so many others did not wake up, you and your loved ones woke up. Isn’t it a
fantastic event? Appreciate it and smile at least. Learn to look at a few
people lovingly.
For many people, it just takes an hour to forget that you
are left alive. So give yourself a dose once an hour – a reminder of the value
of life. If you are very insensitive, remind yourself every half-an-hour. If
you are horribly insensitive, remind yourself every five minutes. It takes only
ten seconds to remind yourself. You could do it in just two seconds too – “I’m
alive, you’re alive. What more do you want?”
At present, the quality of your life is not determined by
the clothes that you wear, the educational qualifications that you carry, the
family background that you come from, or the bank balances that you hold.
Rather, the quality of your life depends upon how peaceful and joyous you are
within yourself.
Definitely, somebody who does not have food and who is
deprived of the basic needs for survival can be physically miserable. That
needs to be addressed. For such people, we must take care of those things first.
But for most others, their needs are an endless list. Do you think the man who is
driving the car is happier than the man who is walking on the street? No. It is
not decided by what you have. It depends on how they are at that moment
feeling.
Most people are miserable not because of what they don’t
have. It is simply because they are comparing themselves with someone else. You
are driving a motorbike, you see somebody in a Mercedes and you make yourself
miserable. For someone on a bicycle, he sees you on a motorbike and that is a
limousine for him. Somebody walking on the street looks at the bicycle and
thinks, “Wow, if I just had that, what I would have done with my life!” It is a
foolish game and it is just going on.
All those people who depend on external situations to be happy will never know true joy in their lives. It is definitely the time that we shall look inward and see how to create personal well-being. From your own experience of life, you can clearly see that true well-being will come to you only if your interior changes. If you depend on the outside to bring joy to you, you need to understand, that the outside never happens 100% the way you want it. When this is the reality, at least this one person (that is you) must happen the way you want it to be. If you did happen the way you want yourself to be, the very natural choice is joy. That is not something that you have to pursue. If you fall back into your original nature, joyfulness is the only way you will be.