Bird Droppings December 25, 2011
Where do we find happiness?
Within the spirit of our holiday season as I checked my various blogs, emails and social networking sites early this morning and I found an overabundance of “I got’s” and few “I gave’s”. Scattered earlier were a few of parents waking up with small children and excitement of this special morning with family. But as the morning progressed the stories shifted and one caught my attention it was of a little girl upset because she could not find her mother’s present under the tree. After a careful search it was found in her bedroom wrapped perfectly and containing gift cards to her mother’s favorite places. All of her birthday money and allowance had been saved up for this present. That is special. Glad I waited to write and saw this note.
“The very purpose of our life is happiness; the very motion of our lives is toward happiness.” Dalai Lama
My first glance out the window today and our red tailed hawk was perched in the old black walnut tree as he does early in the morning nearly every day waiting on squirrels running through the hedge row seeking pecans from the several trees in our yard. Thinking back it was several years ago in my journey through life that I wandered through the Mall of Athens. I happened into a store where Native American art was sold, long since that time they have moved to a shop in Hawkinsville Ga. A very pungent smell filled the store; it is a smell you do not forget easily, the smell of rawhide. A traditional drum maker was building drums in the old way. He was stretching rawhide over hand carved and tooled shells of native cedar and spruce. This drum maker had left a construction job to build drums full time, traveling around the country making drums for sale and doing workshops as he was here.
“Happiness is a sort of action.” Aristotle
“The really happy man never laughs — seldom — though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping is a relief of mental tension — and the happy are not over strung.” Prof. F.A.P. Aveling
As I left that store I felt at ease, at peace with myself. Sitting here this morning perhaps it was how this artist as he worked and exuded a peace and happiness. He was doing what he wanted to do, and that is a key to happiness. It is about being where we should be and doing what it is we were meant to do. For people that journey may take you through many jobs and many travels.
“Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.” Mildred Barthel
“When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention.” Edward Fredric Benson
I was thinking to some of my students who chose to not be happy, it could be perhaps a chemical disturbance or imbalance within them. Clinical depression is actually a chemical imbalance, and can be treated chemically. However so many may choose not to be treated and then my question is can we each search for and attain happiness.
“The world’s literature and folklore are full of stories that point out how futile it can be to seek happiness. Rather, happiness is a blessing that comes to you as you go along; a treasure that you incidentally find.” Louis Binstock
“It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.” Hugo Black
So in effect happiness finds us is what I think I read. If you look under happiness on the internet you can find happiness scales to show you how happy you are and if you are. I looked up happiness in the dictionary always a good start and according to Dictionary.com, happiness is “Characterized by good luck; fortunate. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase. Cheerful; willing: happy to help.”
“The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.” Smiley Blanton
Who is Smiley Blanton, actually a famed psychiatrist and author of numerous books and co-partner since 1937 in the Peale Blanton Institute with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale? I thought he was a clown by his name. It has been many years since I shook the hand of Dr. Peale in Macon Georgia back in 1972 or so.
“Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.” Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.” Albert Camus
I always write about the journey we are on, each one of us is traveling as we go each day. I do believe we seek happiness, as the Dalai Lama states in the first quote I used today “The very purpose of our life is happiness; the very motion of our lives is toward happiness.” I do think we venture towards happiness in our daily walk. Somewhere we get lost or off track and many find it hard to get back to the trail. This is for so many a special time of year and I wish we could each offer a hand as we go. Though it is late in the evening please any one you meet offer a hand and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart and always to give thanks.
namaste
bird
