Quotes Tagged "happiness"
Your Life is ultimately made up of the choices you made at different times. When you choose based on economic criteria you may end up being both challenged and unhappy. When you choose based on Happiness, you may still have challenges to deal with, but you will be happy. So, choose wisely. Going with the flow is to be able to choose to be happy over choosing to be economically secure. Because economic security is a human invention, it is an illusion. What is true is Happiness. You have been given this human form to be happy. With Happiness, you can never be unhappy. Simple!
Acceptance does not necessarily help you solve a problem. But acceptance helps you immensely in dealing with it, in making you non-suffering. When you resist a situation, you are fighting it. Whatever you resist, will fight back. Such is Life. All your suffering comes from wishing that your Life is different from what it is. So, in addition to the intense pain that the situation has thrown up, you have now invited suffering into your Life by wishing that the painful situation did not exist in the first place. Instead, embrace the situation. Gracefully accept your Life for what it is. Then, slowly, very slowly, time heals, peeling off layer after layer of suffering, as you understand the futility of prolonged sadness. As your suffering and sadness dissolve, you feel repaired, happy and at peace with your new reality.
Each one’s pain is different. You can empathize with them but you cannot always understand what someone is going through. Even if they are a long-time companion, a sibling, a parent or a child. No amount of empathy can help the other person either. They have to go through what they have to go through. Ultimately, everyone has to deal with their pain themselves; they have to understand it, negotiate with it and accept it. Acceptance does not take away the pain, but it instantaneously frees you of all suffering. So, if you you love someone who is dealing with intense pain, encourage them to embrace it; help them to be non-suffering. Being non-suffering holds the key to Happiness.
Instead of obsessing over getting them married, what parents must really wish for is that their young adult children find great soulmates. A soulmate is someone who you can relate to and are best friends with; someone that you want to grow old with – and live with all your Life! Some people find their soulmates early and some others find them over time. So, parents’ worrying sick that their children must be married here, now, by a certain age, to a certain ‘category or class’ of people…all this is clearly avoidable stress and effort. A marriage is only a social contract, an irrelevant label. Pushing your children to get married so your duty is done, so you may have grandchildren, is acting selfishly, irresponsibly. Instead encourage your children to do what they love doing, to find love and be loving! Living-in with a BFF trumps being unhappily married – any day!
Everything happens in its own time, place and pace. You may wish for something to happen. Or you may wish against its happening. But you cannot force the outcome. What has to happen alone happens – always! So, go with the flow. Understand that it is what it is. Accept every happening in your Life that you didn’t want, and which you dislike, as your new normal and keep going. This is what intelligent living is all about. It doesn’t change any reality but frees you from unhappiness, from misery. It helps you anchor in peace and be happy no matter how challenging your circumstances are.
There is nothing wrong in getting married. The problem arises when you expect a marriage to deliver companionship or when you start believing that a marriage makes love happen. If you look at it objectively, marriage is just a social license for people to live together and, well, have sex, and, in most cases, procreate. Beyond being that license, it serves no purpose. The loving between people, the act of sexual intercourse and the biological process of having children – all of these can surely happen even outside of a marriage. Which is why marriage is neither necessary nor relevant. So, marry only if you really want to, but don’t expect the marriage to make you happy. Companionship is what delivers happiness. And companionship is not about gender or age; it is about finding love, being loving – in the present continuous – no matter what and celebrating each other!
When all your efforts at trying to get what you want are exhausted, if you choose to walk away calmly, without grief and frustration, then what you want will flow to you, on its own, if it is meant for you. There is great power in letting go and moving on. It is only when you have let go, of desire itself, that you can receive what is truly meant for you! No one – and nothing – can take away what is meant for you and no one – and nothing – can get you what is not meant for you! Understand this truth about Life – and you will live happily ever after.
There’s a part of all of us that is always wanting to be warm, willing to adjust, open to accommodate and ready to tolerate. But let all the warmth, adjustment, accommodation and tolerating happen at a material level. And let it stop there. Please don’t allow anyone to affect your dignity just because they are older to you or more powerful – whoever they are, even if they are a parent, sibling or spouse. Because when you allow that you end up becoming intensely unhappy. And, more often than not, you suffer silently. Let this be your guiding light – your inner peace and happiness are the only wealth you have, so, protect them till your last breath!
Don’t intellectualize Life. Not everything has a scientific, rational, logical reason to it. Beyond a point, Life is largely inscrutable. 2+2 does not often add up to 4 in Life and you can’t find the answer to some questions – particularly to the why and why me questions! It is always what it is. Life does not happen because you planned it in a certain way. It so happens that sometimes your plans are in sync with Life’s plans for you. So you end up thinking – given your education and your economic power – that you are controlling your Life. But the moment Life throws you a googly, you are stumped! You are left clueless, numb and debilitated. That’s when you realize that surrendering to Life, humbly accepting what is and going with the flow is what intelligent living is all about! This realization is the key to Happiness.
If you reflect on Life, it has no meaning. You came with nothing. And you will go with nothing. In this time, you will acquire knowledge and experience…you may get fame and wealth…you will build relationships…and blah and blah and blah…but nothing – and no one – is going with you, when it is time for you to leave. So, is Life meaningless? Perhaps, yes. But there’s another view too. The only option each of us has, since we don’t choose to be born, is to bring meaning to the Life that we have been given. Simply, what you do is more important than what you acquire and own in your lifetime. Therefore, make what you do – to make this world a better place for the generations to follow – the singular focus of your journey while enjoying every moment of it. This is how you bring meaning to an apparently meaningless Life!
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