The Art of.....

Recently I bought a couple of books. Only upon checking my purchases at home did I discover that I bought Sun Tzu's Art of War and The Art of Happiness by HH Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler. How contrary ^^

Anyway, putting war aside, I started on happiness. In my previous post, I was pondering on the purpose of life. The first chapter of this book states that the purpose of life is to be happy and that we have the right to be happy. Some people are like how can you be happy when the economy is crashing, disasters are destroying and the world is about to end!!! Well, is being sad and depressed going to help the economy or the people affected by disasters or stop the Apocalypse? 

The book goes on to talk about how happy people are not selfish and caring only about their happiness but rather truly happy people will go on to spread happiness to others. The example given is that if you were driving and another car signals to enter your lane, a person in a happy mood would logically be more likely to give way to that car compared to a person in a foul mood. Another example is how a baby only cares about being well fed, clean and loved (being carried and hugged). But how many people can resist smiling when looking at a happy baby? Plus being loved, clean & healthy and not hungry is not a lot to demand is it? If everyone's demands were that simple, I doubt people will be complaining that their salary is not enough to cover their monthly expenses. 

Sounds simple right? Purpose of life is to be happy. So how do you be happy? Shopping? Overseas trip? The initial chapter also talks about the difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is taking that new sports car out for the first drive. It will wear off after a couple of drives and you will be no happier driving that car compared to any other car. A person asked me one particular day, why are you so  happy? I could not answer him.... I told him I had to reason to be sad. Rather than needing a reason to be happy, it should be our default setting. Life becomes less difficult, always wanting something that will make us happy. 

So go on. Be happy. You have the right to it ^^

*looking through happy photos*