How far have you gone in your life trying to find out what real happiness really means? Is it satisfying your basic needs and that of your loved ones? Is the attainment of the so-called ‘good-life’ the end-all-be-all of things? Is money+fame the ultimate end of everyone? Is spending six decades (or maybe 7) of your life all that there is? Life starts off with 2 years of infancy, 8 years childhood and innocence, 8 years of trial and errors during adolescence, 3 years of life crisis, 4 years (can extend up to eight) of  young adulthood marked with experimentations, partying with people called ‘friends’, and difficult struggles towards responsibility, then longggg years of maturity and prime age, and then…a downhill of old age…more often than not marred with agony and sickness and usually bitterness and regrets…and finally a mournful death.

Despite all those glaring facts and you still believe that there’s more to life than what we originally thought…then we are on the same boat. In fact, I just figured out few years back the nine ingredients to happiness (the real one) and I am an eager-beaver to share them to you…just in case meekness will make these ingredients fill-in your “heart and kidneys”…i.e., your deep-seated emotions and intentions.

Here they are, and I suggest you make a checklist out of it and make an honest assessment how have you been faring on each. The last time I did, I was 4 out of 9. Check out what’s yours:

1. Developing a spiritual outlook on life

2. Being content and avoiding the “love of money

3. Keeping pleasures in their place

4. Being generous and working for the happiness of others

5. Being thankful and counting your blessings

6. Having a forgiving spirit

7. Choosing your associates wisely

8. Taking care of your body and shunning bad habits

9. ‘Rejoicing in the hope’ set out for you in the Bible

Source: www.watchtower.org

See…hapiness can be simple and need not be complicated and costly. Even the scanty fellows can experience what real happiness is…because at its best, real happiness, unlike what the vast majority have thought…is not something that money can buy….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Personal, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.