Looking In The Eyes Of Happiness

From what you see around you in your daily lives, happiness may appear an illusory state of existence. Do you see true happiness in the lives of those who pass through your world each day? Do you see, and feel, true Happiness in your own life, and the lives of your immediate family? Or in your work colleagues, or fellow commuters?

The answer, in many cases, will be "no, I don't". Why is that? Is it because so many people have so many reasons to be unhappy? Or is it, maybe, because they fail to see what in their lives should be a reason for Happiness?

Being short sighted, as I am, can have a drastic affect on the way you see the world around you. I usually only wear glasses to watch tv, or dark glasses outside in the sun. Without them, the world can be severely distorted. Somebody I know well could pass me by, and if I'm not close enough, I will not recognize them. Worse still, I may think I recognize someone only to find to my embarrassment that is not them at all; in fact, the person may not even remotely look like the friend I had thought it was. More often than not, that would be because of expectation; I would expect to see a certain person in a certain place, and someone would appear, maybe with similar clothes on, and I would think "It's??."

Not long ago that happened with my own wife. I wanted to talk to her, and knew she was out the back of our apartment chatting. Before I even went out on the balcony to call her, I was expecting her to be in the garden below. I went out, and there was indeed a group of women and children sitting around a table chatting below. My eyes immediately went to the lady who was dressed with clothes similar to some my wife owned, but she was a little too far away, and my eyes could not focus properly. She was looking at me but not quite in the right way, but because I was expecting my wife, that's who I momentarily saw. I just realized in time to stop asking her to come back up to the apartment for a while, which would have caused quite a stir among the assembled group. My wife was actually in a house 50 metres away across the garden.

Is Happiness The Victim Of Short Sightedness?

I believe that when it comes to happiness, many people have lost the ability to focus their eyes on what is their surrounding reality. Society has almost become conditioned to discontentedness and unhappiness. Being unhappy and dissatisfied has become an expectation for so many people, so when someone looks around at their lives on a day to day basis, there is a distinct absence of happiness in what they see. Even if Happiness had a nucleus before their eyes, it would not be within their field of vision, because it would not be what they were expecting.

Happiness is a state of mind that is within reach of everybody. If two people could have identical lives, one could be happy and the other miserable, just because of the different ways they can view that same life. Like cooking, it is what you do with the ingredients. You could give a set of bland ingredients to two cooks; one who is Cordon Bleu trained could create a delightful meal, presented beautifully; the other, not trained and not interested, would create a bland mess and dump it on the plate like dog food. It is the same with the ingredients of Happiness. You, the chef, have to decide what to do with them. Not anybody else; you!

Seeing, Recognizing and Focusing on the Nuclei of Happiness

It is so easy to neglect the things that, even within your own life already, are the nuclei of happiness. What those nuclei are will depend on you, but you have enough knowledge of yourself to recognize what they are. Think about them, and ask yourself if you have been neglecting them. In many cases, the answer will be yes. Instead, you may have b