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Who wants to be a crorepati?
That many of us are apt to equate happiness and success with money, material wealth and possessions, is a belief born of sheer ignorance. You cannot be happy just because you live in a mansion or a penthouse apartment. You cannot achieve peace and inner harmony just because you drive a Mercedes or a BMW. You cannot be considered successful just because you are a crorepati or millionaire.
Supposing you were told, Today is the last day of your life. Make a list of all the things that you feel you have accomplished, all the things that have made you feel truly happy. What are the things you would put down in that list, knowing that you have only a few hours left to live?
Im certain that your car, bungalow and bank account will find no place on the list. What you are sure to put on it would be the most fundamental elements of a truly happy life your love for God, the love and respect you have earned from your near and dear ones, the sunshine you brought into peoples lives by your warmth, affection and compassion, the kindness you have received from your friends and the love and kindness you have shown to other people.
Abraham Lincoln said, Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Since happiness gives meaning and purpose to life, we must know where to find it. All great philosophers agree that true happiness stems from within us, from a way of thinking about life. This is the most enduring, most agreed upon truth about happiness: if the principles of contentment and satisfaction are not within us, no material success, no pleasure or possession can make us truly happy.
This significant truth is conveyed in a play called The Blue Bird written by the dramatist Maeterlinck. Tyltyl and Mytyl are the children of a woodcutter. They set out in search of happiness, travelling far and wide to seek it. When they return home, they find it right inside their home. We went so far, they exclaim, and it was here all the time!
Very little is needed to make a happy life, Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations. It is all within you, in your way of thinking.
William Lyon Phelps was a distinguished writer and critic, as well as a popular professor at Yale University. He inspired and guided hundreds of students during his long and distinguished career. When he was asked to write a message of guidance and inspiration for the American people, he asserted: The principle of happiness is like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent on things, but be a part of your personality.
As a student himself, Professor Phelps had drawn inspiration from the words of President Timothy Dwight who had visited his college and addressed the students thus: The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.
This was what Phelps taught his students, too. Real happiness cannot come from external things, he told them. The only lasting happiness that you will experience is that which springs from your inner thoughts and emotions. Therefore, he urged them, cultivate your mind. For an empty mind seeks mere pleasure as a substitute for happiness. It is essential, he said, to live inside a mind with attractive and interesting pictures on the walls.
The happiest people are not the ones who make money, buy property and own stocks. The happiest people are those who cultivate the higher mind and think interesting thoughts.
That many of us are apt to equate happiness and success with money, material wealth and possessions, is a belief born of sheer ignorance. You cannot be happy just because you live in a mansion or a penthouse apartment. You cannot achieve peace and inner harmony just because you drive a Mercedes or a BMW. You cannot be considered successful just because you are a crorepati or millionaire.
Supposing you were told, Today is the last day of your life. Make a list of all the things that you feel you have accomplished, all the things that have made you feel truly happy. What are the things you would put down in that list, knowing that you have only a few hours left to live?
Im certain that your car, bungalow and bank account will find no place on the list. What you are sure to put on it would be the most fundamental elements of a truly happy life your love for God, the love and respect you have earned from your near and dear ones, the sunshine you brought into peoples lives by your warmth, affection and compassion, the kindness you have received from your friends and the love and kindness you have shown to other people.
Abraham Lincoln said, Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Since happiness gives meaning and purpose to life, we must know where to find it. All great philosophers agree that true happiness stems from within us, from a way of thinking about life. This is the most enduring, most agreed upon truth about happiness: if the principles of contentment and satisfaction are not within us, no material success, no pleasure or possession can make us truly happy.
This significant truth is conveyed in a play called The Blue Bird written by the dramatist Maeterlinck. Tyltyl and Mytyl are the children of a woodcutter. They set out in search of happiness, travelling far and wide to seek it. When they return home, they find it right inside their home. We went so far, they exclaim, and it was here all the time!
Very little is needed to make a happy life, Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations. It is all within you, in your way of thinking.
William Lyon Phelps was a distinguished writer and critic, as well as a popular professor at Yale University. He inspired and guided hundreds of students during his long and distinguished career. When he was asked to write a message of guidance and inspiration for the American people, he asserted: The principle of happiness is like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent on things, but be a part of your personality.
As a student himself, Professor Phelps had drawn inspiration from the words of President Timothy Dwight who had visited his college and addressed the students thus: The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.
This was what Phelps taught his students, too. Real happiness cannot come from external things, he told them. The only lasting happiness that you will experience is that which springs from your inner thoughts and emotions. Therefore, he urged them, cultivate your mind. For an empty mind seeks mere pleasure as a substitute for happiness. It is essential, he said, to live inside a mind with attractive and interesting pictures on the walls.
The happiest people are not the ones who make money, buy property and own stocks. The happiest people are those who cultivate the higher mind and think interesting thoughts.
