Can anyone actually make us happy?
Hello! Welcome to yet another blog at lifenmyself. Hope the universe is treating you really well. I have a thought to share on this one particular question that everyone has. Is there anyone who can make us happy? Can something, some situation, someplace, some job, someone actually make us happy for good and long?
Now before we try getting to the answer to this one, let’s deliberate a little on what it is to be happy and is it any different from being joyful? Is happiness and joy, the same?
What do you think? We’d be happy to hear from you and read your comments on this.
Ok! Coming back to “others” making us happy, here is how it goes. Happiness is the experience of gratifying our wants and desires that crops-up from emotions. Happiness comes from outside, hence the source is external. It stays for a while, has an expiry and fades away once the underlying desire is met. Not only this, the entre process of happiness has stages, starting with anticipation, euphoria, followed by the settling phase and then, the fading period. Purely gratification based, it mostly weakens us, making us fearful and greedy and always making us chase.
Joy on the other hand is the awareness and stillness in the present moment that does not make us want or chase any more than what we already have. Therefore, Joy comes from within, not from the experience of gratification but from awareness and the state of fulfilment. As different from happiness, Joy is inward focused, stays forever and strengthens us.
Coming back to the question? Can someone, something, some situation, some place make us happy?We believe, Yes! it does. But the truth us, No. Nothing can make us happy for good and long, while momentary happiness is what we experience always.
The reason we believe it does, is the emotional high and the happy hormones that our brain releases in response to the momentary gratification of our wants and desires. They do make us happy, mostly till gratification stays. Once we are over the euphoria, and we settles, another desire takes birth and that makes us chase another situation, that we now believe will make us happy. We keep on doing this on loop, again and again and again, until we tire, get old and die with so many unmet desires and dreams.
Every derived happiness is short lived, and therefore no one, nothing, no situation, no place can make or keep us happy for long. nothing can keep us happy for long. Now does this mean that we can never be happy? We can be. We can be joyful and yes, we can be happy too. And this can happen by:
One: Being aware of the futility of every desire we chase. Being aware that every bit we chase for our gratification will stay for a while and then fade away for another desire to crop up
Two: by letting go of the expectation and belief that another person or some-thing will make us happy.
It is our just our mind play and our own belief that tells us that another person or a situation makes us happy. In reality , it is the derived gratification from that experience for fulfilling a desire from that situation or person, which actually makes us believe that we are happy. Happiness derived from gratification is momentary and the belief that others make us happy is a mere illusion.
While on the other hand, we can cultivate joy from within that always stays with us, grows, never fades and gets us the strength to stay at peace, all the time. We must therefore endeavor to never give any situation or a person or something that much power to make us happy or unhappy. We are not saying that must not look to gratify ourselves or want to feel and desire. As long as we are alive, we will have desires and we must experience and live those. But, mindfully and in a state of awareness. We must never forget that emotions are nothing but energy in motion. We must master them rather than letting them enslaving us.
Most of us are enslaved by our mind and emotions and this eagle mind, as master Eckhart tolles calls it, never wants us and our being to win over. The idea here is to break free and regain our awareness in a powerful state of mindfulness so that we no longer want to constantly chase. It’s about time we cultivate Joy and break free from the slavery of our mind that is constantly looking for happiness outside.
Listen to this & other episodes on Podcast https://myinnerlight.podbean.com/e/can-someone-make-us-happy/ Peace to all.