Happiness

Happiness is a must in life. but what on earth is happiness? Some people are happy when they’ve made money, while other are happy when they’ve found their true love, as for me, I find bliss when I am reading an interesting book in a warm and pretty room. Evidently, 1,000 people will have 1,000 different definitions of happiness. Why is it difficult to define, or rather discover and achieve happiness? I think the major determinant lies in a person’s attitude.
In my opinion, there is little correlation between the circumstance of people’s lives and how happy they are. A moment’s reflection should make this obvious. We all know people who have a relatively easy and comfortable life, and yet are essentially unhappy. And we also know people who have suffered a great deal but generally remain happy. Therefore, happiness is actually of one’s own making. If you have a positive attitude and are determined to find the little happiness of life, you are destined to be jolly.
In the second place, happiness lies in the struggle to be happy. People sometimes go to extremes, and frantically pursue money, power, high social status, etc., which are all symbols of success --- but never of happiness. Perhaps if they shifted their life’s goal from ultimate success to unswerving efforts and to a confidence that they will be successful one day they’d be a great deal happier.
Besides defining it, how do people achieve happiness? No doubt, different people have different ways of going about this task. The following is mine: The first secret is gratitude. All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain; but it is truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy. The second secret is realizing that happiness is a by-product of something else. The most obvious sources are those pursuits that give our lives a purpose. These can be anything from playing tennis to studying insects. The more passions we have, the more happiness we are likely to experience.
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