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寻找身边的幸福——What do I Learn from Happier（2008级本科生党支部廖锐）
What do I Learn from Happier
Am I happy? I am sure many people have once asked themselves like this more or less. Maybe when sometime your dream or appeal is achieved, you feel happy. But when you look back, can you find a time when a very important goal was met, however, you didn’t feel as happy as you had expected? What is happiness? This is the first question the author gives us. Is it a kind of emotion, like joy? Or painless, good luck? Joy, luck, fulfillment and other words are often used as substitutes for happiness, but those emotions fly away like time, which feel good but can’t serve as the standard of happiness, nevertheless the pillars of happiness. A happy life attitude is to struggle for meaningful goals, to enjoy the moment as well as the better future, to attach importance to the process and the ending: can you do that?
Happiness is a process of long term endeavor and endless struggle, a combination of joy and meaning. It is also a growing-up, a habit and an everlasting friend. Happiness is not huffing and puffing up to the mountain top, nor aimless wandering down below. It is all the feeling and experiencing up the hill. My dear friend, what do you think?
With the rapid development of economy and life pace, how to improve the feeling of happiness has gradually become the daily topic of the public. That raises a question: how can people improve the sense of happiness in this particular social and economic environment? How to be happy? Where is happiness? There is no unique answer, and just due to this reason, we have much more chance to think about how to improve happiness level, how to realize life’s happiness and find it.
We often define happiness as the innate fulfillment about our own living status through the comparison with the weak. This kind of comparison will cause two kinds of mental results: Rejoicing in the calamity of others or sympathizing for the weak. But neither of these can truly make you feel happy. But how can we realize the true happiness—Facing the world positively, maintain the mind status peacefully, looking at the relation between material wealth and happiness, and without envying the rich and looking down upon the poor—this is the right attitude towards happiness. How happy one is depends largely on how he perceives happiness, which I think should be like Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar said: happy to learn, happy to work and a joyful marriage are the base and essence of happiness.
Happiness does not come from what we get or what situation we are in, it comes from in what angle we look at life. Some people, even they live a rich life and get a well-paid job, still don’t feel happy, while at the same time stick to one belief that outer environment can change inner feeling. Some rich people owe their unhappiness to this belief: when they feel unhappy, they feel regretful—they feel undeserved for the money. On the contrary, we should seek happiness and live meaningfully through studying, and therefore transfer what we learn into our inner nature and sink deep into that atmosphere of happiness and meaning. We can also transfer leaning into a fascinating and rejoicing journey seeking happiness all along the whole life span.
Working happily is one factor of realizing happiness, and a proper degree of work resembles punishment. In Bible, Adam and Eve stand as typical examples of happy life, they don’t need to work, they live happily. However, when they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of wisdom, they are driven out of heaven and then their heirs have to work for their life as a punishment. Often we describe happiness as “free from trouble and work”, but on earth there must be work and trouble to keep us busy and meaningful. Therefore, we should regard work as duty, more than a means of keeping ourselves alive. If you define work as the latter, then work will be made up of labor and expectation for holidays, far from joy and meaning. At last, we should change our concept from “What can I do?” to “What do I want to do?” and “What can bring me happiness and meaning”. Therefore, our choice is made from the degree of happiness, which brings us closer to joy and happiness.
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar says that the first factor of a happy marriage is not to find a “Mr. or Mrs. Right” but to cultivate a close relationship. Because even you live with the right person, with the time passing by, you can still get unhappy, for you are responsible for your spouse, your kids and your marriage, which can slowly make you unhappy, uncomfortable. Whatever, just as Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar tells us: we need to be grateful, to express love and strengthen love.
One of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s student once said: Compared with noticing what we need to survive, I prefer to find what we can’t live without. While the angle changes, the feeling changes. So, the feeling towards happiness changes, too. My dear friend, what do you think?
I remember the story Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar tells in the book. The hedonist errs in equating effort with pain and pleasure with happiness. The gravity of this error is revealed in an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” in which a ruthless criminal, killed while running from the police, is greeted by an angel sent to grant his every wish. The man, fully aware of his life of crime, cannot believe that he is in heaven. He is initially baffled but then accepts his good fortune and begins to list his desires: he asks for an obscene sum of money and receives it; he asks for his favorite food and it is served to him; he asks for beautiful women and they appear. Life (after death), it seems, could not be better.
However, as time goes by, the pleasure he derives from continuous indulgence begins to diminish; the effortlessness of his existence becomes tiresome. He asks the angel for some work that will challenge him and is told that in this place he can get whatever he wants—except the chance to work for the things he receives.
Without any challenges, the criminal becomes increasingly frustrated. Finally, in utter desperation, he says to the angel that he wants to get out, to go to “the other place.” The criminal, assuming that he is in heaven, wants to go to hell. The camera zooms in on the angel as his delicate face turns devious and threatening. With the ominous laughter of the devil, he says, “This is the other place.”
From this story, we see that life is not heaven unless we think brightly. Life itself can’t give us all but opportunity, if we can grasp it, earth is heaven; if we cannot, earth is the other place. My dear friend, what do you think?
Life today is not tougher than any time before. In ancient times, in Middle Ages, in war times, people had to face much greater challenge of survival, for which is the only hope in a cruel society. In modern times, we always complain about the financial crisis, the cruelty of finding a job, the hardness of sustaining a family, all those burdens fall on our young shoulders and bend our backs. But have you thought about the ancient hunters getting up earlier than the sun and hiding in the bushes in freezing dews? Have you thought about knights of the Middle Ages spending half of their lifetime guarding the castles? Have you thought about the teenage boys losing their lives in the world wars for their motherland? Therefore, my dear friend, ask not what the society can give you, ask what you can do to make life better.
In Chinese culture, our ancestors have left us great volume of works, of them many concern the philosophy of life—how to maintain a good spirit during the ever changing society: Taoism tells us to restrain our lust, anger, greed and so on, Buddhism tells us to bear the toughness of life and Confucius tells us to learn something for ourselves, for our family, for our country and for the whole world.
So in my experience, to be happy and to be happier require us to refresh our mind and body. The outside world always gives us passive information, thereafter affects our inner world. Those anger, lust, envy etc. gives us an illusion of overwhelming unhappiness. A good way to erase these emotions is to read books and draw inspiration from great minds.
This is the last year of the college life, maybe even the last year of my school education, a year later I will be doing my job as a social citizen. These three years have witnessed my growth, my trials and errors, my sorrows and joys, last but not least, the care and teachings of my dear teachers and the party upon me. All these strengthen my ability and willingness to serve the people and the country.
Am I happy? I am sure many people have once asked themselves like this more or less. Maybe when sometime your dream or appeal is achieved, you feel happy. But when you look back, can you find a time when a very important goal was met, however, you didn’t feel as happy as you had expected? What is happiness? This is the first question the author gives us. Is it a kind of emotion, like joy? Or painless, good luck? Joy, luck, fulfillment and other words are often used as substitutes for happiness, but those emotions fly away like time, which feel good but can’t serve as the standard of happiness, nevertheless the pillars of happiness. A happy life attitude is to struggle for meaningful goals, to enjoy the moment as well as the better future, to attach importance to the process and the ending: can you do that?
Happiness is a process of long term endeavor and endless struggle, a combination of joy and meaning. It is also a growing-up, a habit and an everlasting friend. Happiness is not huffing and puffing up to the mountain top, nor aimless wandering down below. It is all the feeling and experiencing up the hill. My dear friend, what do you think?
With the rapid development of economy and life pace, how to improve the feeling of happiness has gradually become the daily topic of the public. That raises a question: how can people improve the sense of happiness in this particular social and economic environment? How to be happy? Where is happiness? There is no unique answer, and just due to this reason, we have much more chance to think about how to improve happiness level, how to realize life’s happiness and find it.
We often define happiness as the innate fulfillment about our own living status through the comparison with the weak. This kind of comparison will cause two kinds of mental results: Rejoicing in the calamity of others or sympathizing for the weak. But neither of these can truly make you feel happy. But how can we realize the true happiness—Facing the world positively, maintain the mind status peacefully, looking at the relation between material wealth and happiness, and without envying the rich and looking down upon the poor—this is the right attitude towards happiness. How happy one is depends largely on how he perceives happiness, which I think should be like Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar said: happy to learn, happy to work and a joyful marriage are the base and essence of happiness.
Happiness does not come from what we get or what situation we are in, it comes from in what angle we look at life. Some people, even they live a rich life and get a well-paid job, still don’t feel happy, while at the same time stick to one belief that outer environment can change inner feeling. Some rich people owe their unhappiness to this belief: when they feel unhappy, they feel regretful—they feel undeserved for the money. On the contrary, we should seek happiness and live meaningfully through studying, and therefore transfer what we learn into our inner nature and sink deep into that atmosphere of happiness and meaning. We can also transfer leaning into a fascinating and rejoicing journey seeking happiness all along the whole life span.
Working happily is one factor of realizing happiness, and a proper degree of work resembles punishment. In Bible, Adam and Eve stand as typical examples of happy life, they don’t need to work, they live happily. However, when they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of wisdom, they are driven out of heaven and then their heirs have to work for their life as a punishment. Often we describe happiness as “free from trouble and work”, but on earth there must be work and trouble to keep us busy and meaningful. Therefore, we should regard work as duty, more than a means of keeping ourselves alive. If you define work as the latter, then work will be made up of labor and expectation for holidays, far from joy and meaning. At last, we should change our concept from “What can I do?” to “What do I want to do?” and “What can bring me happiness and meaning”. Therefore, our choice is made from the degree of happiness, which brings us closer to joy and happiness.
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar says that the first factor of a happy marriage is not to find a “Mr. or Mrs. Right” but to cultivate a close relationship. Because even you live with the right person, with the time passing by, you can still get unhappy, for you are responsible for your spouse, your kids and your marriage, which can slowly make you unhappy, uncomfortable. Whatever, just as Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar tells us: we need to be grateful, to express love and strengthen love.
One of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s student once said: Compared with noticing what we need to survive, I prefer to find what we can’t live without. While the angle changes, the feeling changes. So, the feeling towards happiness changes, too. My dear friend, what do you think?
I remember the story Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar tells in the book. The hedonist errs in equating effort with pain and pleasure with happiness. The gravity of this error is revealed in an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” in which a ruthless criminal, killed while running from the police, is greeted by an angel sent to grant his every wish. The man, fully aware of his life of crime, cannot believe that he is in heaven. He is initially baffled but then accepts his good fortune and begins to list his desires: he asks for an obscene sum of money and receives it; he asks for his favorite food and it is served to him; he asks for beautiful women and they appear. Life (after death), it seems, could not be better.
However, as time goes by, the pleasure he derives from continuous indulgence begins to diminish; the effortlessness of his existence becomes tiresome. He asks the angel for some work that will challenge him and is told that in this place he can get whatever he wants—except the chance to work for the things he receives.
Without any challenges, the criminal becomes increasingly frustrated. Finally, in utter desperation, he says to the angel that he wants to get out, to go to “the other place.” The criminal, assuming that he is in heaven, wants to go to hell. The camera zooms in on the angel as his delicate face turns devious and threatening. With the ominous laughter of the devil, he says, “This is the other place.”
From this story, we see that life is not heaven unless we think brightly. Life itself can’t give us all but opportunity, if we can grasp it, earth is heaven; if we cannot, earth is the other place. My dear friend, what do you think?
Life today is not tougher than any time before. In ancient times, in Middle Ages, in war times, people had to face much greater challenge of survival, for which is the only hope in a cruel society. In modern times, we always complain about the financial crisis, the cruelty of finding a job, the hardness of sustaining a family, all those burdens fall on our young shoulders and bend our backs. But have you thought about the ancient hunters getting up earlier than the sun and hiding in the bushes in freezing dews? Have you thought about knights of the Middle Ages spending half of their lifetime guarding the castles? Have you thought about the teenage boys losing their lives in the world wars for their motherland? Therefore, my dear friend, ask not what the society can give you, ask what you can do to make life better.
In Chinese culture, our ancestors have left us great volume of works, of them many concern the philosophy of life—how to maintain a good spirit during the ever changing society: Taoism tells us to restrain our lust, anger, greed and so on, Buddhism tells us to bear the toughness of life and Confucius tells us to learn something for ourselves, for our family, for our country and for the whole world.
So in my experience, to be happy and to be happier require us to refresh our mind and body. The outside world always gives us passive information, thereafter affects our inner world. Those anger, lust, envy etc. gives us an illusion of overwhelming unhappiness. A good way to erase these emotions is to read books and draw inspiration from great minds.
This is the last year of the college life, maybe even the last year of my school education, a year later I will be doing my job as a social citizen. These three years have witnessed my growth, my trials and errors, my sorrows and joys, last but not least, the care and teachings of my dear teachers and the party upon me. All these strengthen my ability and willingness to serve the people and the country.
