DESIRE for happiness is essential because it is the motivator for all our acts. Saint Augustine wrote in On The Happy Life:“Our nature is tuned towards happiness.”
That desire for happiness is so natural that we are unaware of it like the oxygen we breathe all our lives without even thinking about it. Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of innumerable inexhaustible desires to possess the world. We look for happiness outside when it is an inner state of being. If it were external, happiness would always be out of reach. We do years of schooling then go to college and find a job. We go for a work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a lot of time enhancing our comfort, wealth and social status but we do little to improve our inner conditions that really determine the quality of our lives.
We live a whole life looking at the external world and trying to remain happy by acquiring useless toys, which have no lasting value.
Charlette Bronte says in the book Vilette: “Happiness is not a potato, to be planted and filled with manure. It is generated like electricity which requires fuel and willingness to switch on.”
You have to persevere to turn mulberry leaves into silk and silk can drape a human being to make her beautiful. But then, the silk has to be woven into a fabric which requires patience and perseverance.
– T.G.L. Iyer
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