HAPPINESS

This is a topic so important that I put it in all Caps. Money does not hold a candle to happiness; all the Gold, Riches and Diamonds pale in importance to personal Happiness. Unfortunately, far too many people are unhappy. I would even suggest that a preponderance of the most unhappy people are among the wealthy. So, how is it that I qualify to can make such a statement? Well, my life has covered an extraordinarilly wide range of experiences; extremes of highs and lows outside the ranges of average. For example, though I was raised with money, my parents were both victims of the Depression and my father did not enjoy the experience that money can often buy. He never returned to Austria where he had met my mother. He never again saw her family because IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE. I, on the other hand, have lived my life with open arms to experience. I can now look back and recognize when I was most HAPPY. When I had my custom home with multiple fireplaces and drove V-12 BMWS (one even had the license plate ‘V-12’), I was often arrogant, often unhappy that my car was not ‘detailed’ better by a hard working young kid. My Happiness then seemed to revolve around my monthly income and it was rarely what I wanted it to be. This went on for a decade. Then, in 2009, the fractional reserve banking system under which we live, broke the Real Estate Market which pulled Construction down with it. Once I lost my ‘nest egg’, the world in which I lived changed dramatically. I began to appreciate the small things. My cooking improved and I cooked for myself. I had left my high maintenance wife and recommended that she “move on to number 6”. That’s right, I was her fifth husband. So, in the interim of fifteen years since my personal banking collapse, I have learned quite a bit about happiness. I can sum it up suiccinctly. Most everyone gets caught up in their immediate needs and this often leads to the creation fears and anxieties in our private worlds. We conjure these things up in our imagination. The result is preponderantly, Depression, which can be regarded as the antithesis to Happiness. Doctors will then prescribe one or several ‘Anti Depressant Drugs’ that the United States is currently addicted to. All that is really needed is DISTRACTION away from your inner thoughts and imagination that manufacture fear and anxiety. Through the pursuits of Spirituality, Health (diet and exercise) and Service to others, the mind is distracted from self demoralizing. Of these, the most important is Service. When you embark on helping someone in need – whether the need is financial, physical, spiritual or moral – you begin a journey that treats a problem or dilemma that another can not, by his or her self easily remedy. Through the smiles and happiness that you receive from others, you are transformed into feeling self worth and you are pleased with who you are, and what you have done in an albeit small degree to make this world a better place. Just as this is the Good that opposes Evil, so too is this the culmination of the Happiness that opposes Depression. WHAT CAN YOU DO?? Join an organization, a church or a Society for good. It will change your life. You will be Happy. I endeavor to help others while I can and now, as I enter the final years of my life, I feel happiness in ways that are real and realized. We all have the desire to be Happy; find it in others, by helping where you can. This is the proverbial ‘Win, Win’. This is the very definition of a ‘Life Well Lived’.