Learn to be happy
It seems to me that the first thing we should teach every person who reaches adolescence is that humans are not born happy or unhappy, but that we learn to be one thing or another and that, to a large extent, it depends on our choice. Whether happiness or misfortune comes to us. That it is not true, as many think, that happiness can be found like a coin on the street or that it can win like a lottery, but rather that it is something that is built, brick by brick, like a house.
They should also be taught that happiness is never complete in this world, but that, even so, there are more than enough portions of joy to fill a life with juice and enthusiasm and that one of the keys is precisely not to give up or ignore the pieces of happiness that we possess by spending our lives dreaming or waiting for the entire happiness.
It would also be necessary to tell them that there are no “recipes” for happiness, because, first of all, there is not just one, but many happinesses and that each person must build their own, which can be very different from that of their neighbors. And because, secondly, one of the keys to being happy is discovering “what” kind of happiness is my own.
Add later that, although there are no infallible recipes, there are a series of paths by which, with certainty, one can walk towards it. A few suddenly occur to me:
– Value and strengthen the positive forces of our soul. Discover and enjoy all the good things we have. Not having to wait to meet a blind person to find out how beautiful and important our eyes are.
– Serenely assume later the negative or deficient parts of our existence.
– Live open towards others. To think that it is preferable to be deceived four or five times in life than to spend our lives mistrusting others.
– Have a great ideal, something that centers our existence and towards which to direct the best of our energies.
– Blatantly believe in the good. Have confidence that in the long run -and sometimes very long- it will always end up prevailing.
– In love, worry more about loving than about being loved.
– Choose, if possible, a job that we like. And if this is impossible, try to love the job we have.
– Constantly review our scales of values. Take care that money does not take over our hearts, because it is an idol that is difficult to remove from it when it has made us its slaves.
– Discover that God is happy.
– Try to smile with desire or without them.
The list could be longer. But I think that, perhaps, those few lessons could serve to start the study of the most important subject of our career as men: the construction of happiness.
Author: Father José Luis Martín Descalzo
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