What do you think about true happiness? Is happiness the lack of sorrow, dissatisfaction and trouble? Or is it the combination of wealth, comforts and all that comes under riches?

Perhaps none of the above. Happiness is an emotional state ranging from contentment to intense joy. It is a feeling of pleasure which is acquired within a person.

Happiness is neither seeking pleasant happenings, nor it is avoiding unpleasant experience. It cannot be achieved through encountering positive events. It is the pacification of the mind, which produces, through self-complacency, the feeling of satisfaction with yourself and the situation in your life. You are happy when you are content with what you are and what you have.

Hence happiness is developed through satisfaction, which is the direct result of a positive and elevated self-esteem. All your materialistic possessions, reputation and the power you are graced with cannot bring you the happiness and contentment which self-satisfaction can bring. A satisfied, happy, purposive and contended life is the product of self-respect.

High self-esteem is a natural consequence of doing good and doing good is an outcome of being good. This can be understood when you do something good, you feel happy and satisfied. Similarly, doing something wrong even in the absence of everyone makes you feel fallen. No one can feel good without doing something good. A true and genuine self-estimation depends on your benignity, honesty, earnestness and the sacrifices for your fellow beings.

In brief, happiness, contentment and pleasure cannot be purchased from any market of the world and cannot be attained through high resources and powers, but can only be achieved through the respect of other and good deeds. To serve humanity and to be the most advantageous, beneficial and valuable person for others should be one’s purpose. Taking care of dishearten, perplexed and helpless people and serving them in difficulties and troubles, should be one’s desire.

Those who desire to be happy can never be happy just by wanting it, because happiness cannot be achieved by being desirous of it. It is a state of mind, a feeling that is generated inside a person as a result of atonement with yourself. The purpose of life should not be to be happy. It should be to be useful, compassionate, beneficial and to have the satisfaction that you have made your efforts to become the best of what you are capable of.

When you have the surety that your personality does matter, you are needed for the people around you, and that you have left your society and community better than you found it, you will have the feelings of pleasure arising inside you.

This is the real happiness. A happiness that lasts forever.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 12th, 2020