You may think the pursuit of happiness, as our forefathers mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, is that of a selfish search. However, quite to the contrary, it is one of the most selfless quests an individual can undertake.
Although you may not realize it, being happy or at the very least acting happy, is the ultimate win-win feeling. Why? Think about it. When you reflect on all of the people in your life, which folks tend to make you feel good? The miserable ones? Of course not, happy people tend to make us feel better. When you are at work, do you like being around others who do nothing but criticize, complain and belittle others? Most likely, you enjoy working side by side with people who have a positive outlook on life and are able to find the good in others and in most situations.
By the same token, guess what… most everyone else feels the same way! So, ask yourself, “Am I a joy to be around?” “Do I present an aurora of happiness and well being for my kids, parents, spouse, friends, and co-workers?” If not, I strongly recommend you take a good, long, deep look within. If you haven’t heard it yet, “Life is 5% what happens to you and 95% how you react to it.”
On my website, one lady took my happiness survey and wrote some rather critical words about this topic. I only wish she would have left her contact information so that I could have written her back and started a dialogue about her comments. Although I was unable to do that, I am pleased to be able to respond in this article instead.
Allow me to paraphrase. First, she wrote that life is never this simplistic. She claimed that criminals are happy when they are committing their crimes. I have to disagree. While I am no expert on the criminal mind, my guess is that most of them are actually miserable. I dare say that the evil forces in the world, murderers, rapists, even terrorists, are actually not happy. This may be a generalization but I would bet in the majority of cases, it’s true. Overall, I would say that happy people do not rape, pillage and murder.
Next, she wrote that happiness may well be a choice for some people, but not for everyone. She continued, “Environment, genetics and a number of other things have to be factored in and it appears you, (meaning me), ignored them. Perhaps it is because you have never known unhappiness, stress, genes with glitches, etc. If everyone were always happy, we would still be living in caves. Unhappiness with something or someone is a great motivator for change.” She went on to talk about the state of the world and how we should all be unhappy with it.
I am actually very grateful she took the time to submit the survey because until I read it, quite frankly I was completely remiss in addressing these extremely important points that need to be tackled.
First, let me just say that I have had plenty of sadness and stress in my life. Haven’t we all? Yet, I believe there is a difference between feeling sad over particular events taking place, versus an overall attitude of unhappiness.
At age 4, I had an older brother who ran away from home and disappeared for the next 18 years, only to show up years later for just a few fleeting moments until he left again for good. Unfortunately for my family, he was a very unhappy person.
At age 23, I lost my very best friend suddenly due to a congenital heart defect. We had gone through High School and College together, and I actually attribute my entire post graduate career in Entertainment to him as he was responsible for helping me land my first job out of school where we worked together side by side. He was such a powerful, positive force in my life, and touched so many others’ lives, that to this day, 21 years later, not a day goes by when I don’t think about and miss him terribly. He was one of the happiest people I knew and was a great inspiration in my creating a website about happiness.
Five years ago, I lost my mother prematurely. She was just 73. We were so close my entire life and after my kids came along, she was absolutely overjoyed to spoil them as much and for as long as she could. I felt horrible about losing her, and even worse that my kids would never again be able to spend time with her. As young as they were when she passed, fortunately they have nothing but wonderful memories of her and thank goodness we captured many happy events on video so that her memory can live on for generations to come. My mom, despite a very difficult life, was also one of the happiest people I have ever known.
I share all of this for no other reason than to help my anonymous visitor understand that we all have bad things happen to us. The world is full of horrible people, places and things that go on each and every day. For one to choose happiness does not mean that they are ignoring or condoning all of these atrocities. Imagine what doctors and lawyers and morticians go through every day. If they let what they see each and every day affect their ability to be happy, none of them would stand a chance.
I believe also, that she may have misunderstood the difference between ‘unhappiness’ and ‘dissatisfied’. Human nature itself is insatiable. From the moment we are born, we are never satisfied. Radio talk show host and author of Happiness is a Serious Problem, Dennis Prager, recalled that his son’s third word was “more”. His order of speaking was mama, dada and more! I am sure that is something to which all of us can relate. It is this dissatisfaction that drives us to constantly improve. The caveman was not satisfied with the way things were, and thus invented the wheel. Then came the discovery of fire, and so on it goes. Did Bill Gates stop with Windows XP? No, here comes Vista. Today, the i-phone… tomorrow, the i-world! None of this has anything to do with being unhappy. That is an entirely different animal. We can be dissatisfied with the way things are and strive to make them better, but we can still enjoy inner peace and happiness while working on making the world a better place.
Genetics is a completely separate issue. There are people who suffer from chemical imbalances and other physiological anomalies, which can lead to depression, anxiety and other problems, all possible contributors to unhappiness, (some members of my family included… remember my brother?)
Thankfully, there are medications that can help people in these situations. Drugs are only part of the answer though. From what I understand, these medications are only meant to enable the patient to feel better.
It is up to each individual to go the extra step and decide that they can indeed feel happy once they have that capability of doing so through medication. This really is a topic for another discussion though. I am not a doctor. This is just my laymen’s take on the subject. My point is not to minimize any of this. Clearly, there is much more that can be written and in fact, will be written for the website in the days, months and years to come.
To summarize for now though, I emphatically believe that happiness is absolutely a choice. It is the very reason that I created i-choose-happiness.com. It is truly your personal responsibility to be as happy as you possibly can. The world will be a much better place when the majority of its inhabitants are a just a little happier!
Ricky Powell
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/the-pursuit-of-happiness-is-not-just-your-right-its-your-responsibility-131850.html
29 Responses
RLP
2009 Dec 17 1Why are liberals against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
LIFE = abortion
LIBERTY = For BIG Government and against personal responsibility
HAPPINESS = reward failure instead of hard work by taxing the working who are trying to get ahead
David_the_Great
2009 Dec 17 2The liberals are against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because they want to control people lives.
DTG
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Sophie Tucker
2009 Dec 17 3LIFE = no health care
LIBERTY = 6 years of Republican BIG Government built on Borrowing
HAPPINESS = reward failed businesses after their fat cat executives have given themselves HUGE bonuses with taxpayer’s money
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$xo$
2009 Dec 17 4They have become a group of lazy–non-working–free loaders–who think they are entitled to a life–and that you and I should be made to pay for their sorry lives…
it’s how Hitler and Stalin and Carl Marx–sold their social-communism–
Don’t work too hard–MOTHER RUSSIA–Mother Germany_—will care for you!
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xxxLonerxxx
2009 Dec 17 5What is liberty if your not allowed to have an abortion and do what you want.
How can a women have a life if she dies in childbirth, to a child she was not allowed to abort because of your radical religious views? Answer me that.
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Tres D
2009 Dec 17 6I’m not against abortion, but I choose not to abort
The bigger the government, the smaller the person
reward those who have no means of succeeding.
conservative values are often selfish. thats my answer for you. In all kindness, i personally hate politics, but hey.
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dicknose
2009 Dec 17 7Leave the talking points to Rush, he gets paid for what he does. Why don’t you get a job?
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Mike
2009 Dec 17 8These jackasses mocked me because I said that Barack Obama’s spending was prohibited by the 9th amendment.
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Lord Percy
2009 Dec 17 9you don’t actually know what liberalism is do you?
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vivi
2009 Dec 17 10Laziness and a sense of entitlement account for some of them. The wealthy libs pay a small percentage of their income to taxes thru the use of loopholes and offshore accounts. I don’t care how many dims in office say they will "get the rich," the middle class always gets stuck when the tax-and-spend are in office.
I don’t believe that they (the voters) hate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, however, their narcissistic attitudes and demands for immediate government comfort and relief, outweigh any concern for causal and future outcomes.
The left wing politicians, on the other hand, are against those rights because they will not hold onto power without bringing us to our knees economically. It’s about keeping the highest offices in the land out of the hands of those who understand freedom.
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Robin
2009 Dec 17 11first off, there is a difference between liberal and socialist
and a regular liberal might not be quite as obnoxious as you make out
the socialists are opposed to you getting anything except as handed out by them
theirs is a question of power
i think that is kinda like the "rape mentality"
when they say that rape is not about sex, it is about power and hate
socialism for the leaders is not about helping people, that is only a "cover story"
socialism is about the personal power and hate of its leadership
i will think on this further and try to clarify
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Charles M
2009 Dec 17 12…because to "them", LIFE = San Fran’sicko’ lifestyles.
LIBERTY = means as Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid allow "you" to have it. (and) HAPPINESS is the "state" of the Socialist mind that is "your" reward for being a "good" Comrade !
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tribeca_belle
2009 Dec 17 13They’re not. Apparently unless liberals agree with your narrow-minded ideology then you interpret that they are against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Try another approach — supporting keeping the government out of private matters, supporting keeping individual liberties rather than the shredding of our constitutional protections that we saw under the Bush administration, supporting having the government of the people prevent its own people from starving to death on the streets during difficult economic times due to indifference and false ideology that favors using government resources for the benefit of a favored few.
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Bob H
2009 Dec 17 14I dunno, why not ask those killed in the fake wars.
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cantcu
2009 Dec 17 15Stealing from the poor is not getting money by hard work. It is usually those that have squat that do all the work. And they pay for your tax-cuts!
I don’t think you know what the phrase means! And it isn’t about business!
"Liberalism has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment and rejects many foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, established religion, and economic protectionism. Liberals argued that economic systems based on free markets are more efficient and generate more prosperity.
The first modern liberal state was the United States of America, founded on the principle that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This said, much of early liberal thought originated in and influenced the politics of The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France. wiki"
Apparently you don’t like the US very much and would rather bash liberals than take responsibility for the crooks that run rampant in your party, taking peoples homes, retirement and jobs through greed and mismanagement.
The people on welfare have been corporations and those who are the biggest frauds are business and the medical field!
Personally, I think you should do a little research!
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bob_frangione2000
2009 Dec 17 16None of the above are liberal stands. The biggest governments ever in the history of the nation have been under Republican Administrations with Republican majorities in the legislature. If conservatives are pro-life, they have never done anything substantial towards curbing abortions. If we are going to generalize, it is the conservatives that have been taxing the workers to benefit the corporate heads, so that they would somehow create more worker positions to be taxed ( a little something called Reaganomics or trickle down).
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Jacob W
2009 Dec 17 17Of course you are correct. Not only are the Liberal Democrats against Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but if you read the White House policy agenda, they are pretty much gearing up to completely destroy businesses.
They are preparing to make sick days mandatory, family leave mandatory for businesses under 25 employees and "encourage" States (through 1.5 billion dollar bribes) to mandate paid leave. They also want to raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation. This, while their policy is ready to run inflation right off the chart.
Oh, yeah. I bet that really makes people want to start or expand a business. For crying out loud, most diners have more than 25 employees!
*
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/family/
barn
2009 Dec 17 18Because they like dictatorship. they like to dictate to the working class, and poor.
they are control freak’s. they want to control you and me.
Such as Obama and his buddies are doing.
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bustersmycat
2009 Dec 17 19So many things wrong with that little snippet, that pithy little conservative credo, that I do not even know where to begin or where to end, so this is just a quick retort.
Life = Death penalty, War, people sleeping on the streets in dead winter because this rich country is too selfish to help.
Liberty = wiretaps, internal spying, exclusionary policies, cronyism
Happiness = you have the right to work your ass off for minimum wage even though no one can support a family on that; you can get downsized after 20 years so the company can give a multi-million dollar bonus to the directors who eliminate your 30k a year job to save money; you can get a tax cut only if you already have more money than you could possibly actually need.
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Kevin A.R.T.
2009 Dec 17 20Life- Universal Health care. Against the Death Penalty. Against war.
Liberty- Equal rights for all, including marriage. Against violations of the first Amendment like torture or illegal wire taps.
Happiness- Give everyone a chance, instead of only rewarding Billionaires. Help those who struggle, instead of letting them crash and burn/
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*Jo* The *Cow*girl*
2009 Dec 17 21they were dropped on their heads when they were babies.
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Your Horns are Showing Morris.
2009 Dec 17 22LIFE = making one for yourself
LIBERTY = freedom to be what and who you choose
HAPPINESS = is great. you should try it sometime instead of spending so much time obsessing about what others have.
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Imitated By Poseurs
2009 Dec 17 23They’re not. Liberals wrote both The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, while the conservatives of the day were happy bowing to their king and licking brit boot.
The conservative idea of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
life – try and control other people’s while at the same time punking out and not fighting in the wars they claim to "support".
liberty – make the government bigger and make sure you and your cronies rape the US taxpayers with no bid contracts (i.e. halliburton, blackwater, the carlysle group, etc)
happiness – when your wall street buddies fail steal taxpayer money and throw it down the hole (i.e. aig – scumbags are losing money faster than they can beg for more)
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WinonaGal
2009 Dec 17 24Sadly, the liberals just don’t get it. You can ask until you are blue in the face and it all boils down to them being stubborn and thinking they are right and us being equally stubborn and thinking we are right.
Sad, but true.
I wish I had answers that would make people work together better.
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Lh T
2009 Dec 17 25Why do conservatives like to generalize so much?
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Corinne S
2009 Dec 17 26You’re right RLP, good question.
I think libs are influenced by their european counterparts. Being born and grown in France, I find it "interesting" that many have a rosy picture of socialism in general and the French system in particular. I usually tell them: please, come here in France and see things for yourself – see what the consequences of a big government truly are for people; see the high unemployment rate (consistently over 10 % for years), realize that over 1.2 million people (for a total population of 65 million) have been jobless for too long to even have a right to unemployment benefits and live with the RMI => 389 Euros per month; see that starting your own business takes MONTHS in administrative forms and authorizations to get (my brother-in-law started his own business a few years back so I know what I’m talking about); see the super high taxation at all level on ON EVERYONE ( sales tax = more than 19 %).
I wish you could send them here to witness all of that and trust me, they would change their mind!
Americans, you have a great country – protect it! protect your freedoms, your positive attitude, and everything else you have and that socialism would take away from you!
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French American (french by nationality, American at heart).
bwlobo
2009 Dec 17 27I think the basic reason liberals are against the Bill of Rights and our Constitution, is because they think all TRUTH is relative. "Whatever fits my whim is what I consider to be truth…. your truth is not my truth, so I can do whatever I please & your truth be damned!"
This basic presupposition brings down our Constitution and Bill of Rights because these documents which our country was founded, is based on the Truth that we are given these rights by our Creator.
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bwlobo
Hepcat
2009 Dec 17 28Obama is changing America from the " Land of the FREE " to the " Land of ME "
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William T
2009 Dec 17 29You have nailed it on the proverbial head on this one!
Life is harder for the working class.
Big business and financial opportunists are raping our nations solvency.
Abortions are immoral yet demanded by too many as a RIGHT.
How can we turn this around?
Start getting as active as the far left has and fight fire with fire.
Writing your congress reps helps, but is not enough.
Man phone banks during elections.
Give a ride to someone who does not have a ride.
Attend rallies.
Write advertisers that you will boycott their products if they advertise on certain programs.
To quote Alice Cooper, "No more Mr. Nice Guy."
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