SELF
Happiness
Would you rather be happy or rich? Which would you wish for your
children? Happiness cannot be measured as easily as wealth, but it is
probably a better measure of success in the broad sense in life.
But happiness is an elusive thing. It shares with sleep and wild
animals the property that the harder you try to get them the more
likely they are to flee. We generally know when we are feeling
unhappy, but that is not the same as knowing why or what to do about
it.
If you know what is making you unhappy then the issue probably comes
up under some other heading that I mention elsewhere. But suppose you
do not know? Well, that is where I may be able to help. There are many
little signs that can be seen when you know what to look for. For me
this kind of thing has all the fascination of a Sherlock Holmes task.
I enjoy looking for the little clues and from them working out the
full picture. Clues abound. A survey of the things that arouse strong
feelings of either kind is a good place to start. Repeated dreams can
provide clues. A look through earlier ambitions or daydreams; sudden
de-railing of the path of life; a traumatic loss or disappointment:
each of these can tell me a lot.
You will see that the answer to the question, “Why am I
unhappy?” will almost certainly be different for every person. I
would get bored if it were otherwise. I will not provide a stock reply
or peddle one solution to everything. What I seem to be able to do is
to narrow down quite quickly what the cause of an unhappiness is, and
then to suggest possible ways of tackling it. But one of my strong
beliefs is that, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
I am not keen on a kind of deep Freudian analysis that cannot be
proved either way. For me, it is usually a simple practical matter to
find out if we are right about a root of unhappiness. Do something
that it suggests. If that makes you feel better then we have a very
good chance of being on the right path. A few more steps in the same
direction should confirm it.
