What Is Happiness?

18 Aug

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.  Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”  ~ Denis Waitley

Read today’s quote to yourself once again.  Think about the words.  They are very powerful but go counter to most people’s lives.  As human beings, we seem to be hard-wired to seek the material.  We convince ourselves at a very early age that happiness can be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed.  We set about trying to gain, collect, and hoard.

We often think that the only way we can be happy is if we have.  We seek to possess as much as possible, at least more than others we know.  There’s almost an attitude that the one who dies with the most possessions wins.

What does that person actually win?  The one who seeks possessions over anything else is often a sad, frustrated person.  The search for material gain can be exhausting and relentless.  There is never a time to stop as there is always more out there.  When we become consumed with that pursuit, everything else goes by the wayside:  family, friends, and even God.

Why risk losing ourselves — and even the possibility of eternal life with God — just for what can be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed?  Why not, instead, look to those intangible things that have true worth: love, grace, and gratitude.

Jesus identified the way to us and showed us how to get there.  He didn’t say that we had to have a certain amount of possessions to make it.  As a matter of fact, there were a few times in the Gospels that He told His followers it would be best to divest of possessions lest those possessions have too much of a hold on them.

Jesus Himself never counted on possessions.  He counted on the love of His Father.  That was enough for Him.  It should be enough for us as well.

FAITH ACTION:  Look not for material gain today.  Instead, savor the intangibles of love, grace, and gratitude and be happy.