Happiness

The other day a speaker came to my school to talk about the 15 Days of Kindness program our school is taking place in. Basically they compete two rival schools against each other to see who can collect the most gently used shoes and raise the most money for Soles4Souls. It is a great cause and anyone would like to donate can contact me to help my school win or donate through the Soles4Souls website.

Anyways, the guy talking told us about how he took a group of students to Kenya to meet the kids who would be receiving the shoes. Even though the kids live in poverty and have pretty terrible lives by our standards, they were very happy and smiley and friendly. He asked one of them about this and they told him that if they were nice to everybody and loved everybody that they believed and hoped they might make the world a better place. It was all truly touching and inspirational, but it left me with more questions about us, Americans, then them.

Why are we so unhappy? I don't get it. How are we so unhappy with our myriad of blessings and all our possessions and wealth while those poor poverty level people like those Kenyan children are happy? Or think of it this way: How can we even be unhappy? It's selfishness; that's really all there is to it.

There is that saying that says if you're not content with what you have you won't be with what you want. I guess that's the problem. We as a culture are conditioned from birth that we need more. That we don't have enough.

Think about it. Think about how many commercials you see every time you watch TV. You need the next big thing; your old perfectly fine thing you have now isn't perfectly fine. Only the new one from their brand is perfect... That is until they make a new and improved more perfect product.

How old were you when you started watching TV? Probably pretty young. Below a certain age children lack the ability to reason out what the commercial is telling them. That toy is awesome, it can do amazing stuff, you have to have it. That's what they're told so that's what they believe.

But I think there's even more to it than that. I think the whole 'American Dream' is messed up. Whatever you want in life, if you work hard and give it all you got, why then you have just as much of a shot as anyone. (Well, that's how it's supposed to be.) Taken at face value it's not to bad of a dream to have. I mean what's wrong with wanting to climb the ladder of success? Except this ladder has no end in sight and nowhere to get off at. You just gotta keep on climbing and climbing and climbing. No matter how tired you get you can't stop. You don't want to go all the way back to the bottom. Sure you can somewhat rest where you're at, but you can't truly ever rest. The only way you can rest is if you're on the bottom. The only way to get there is to never start climbing in the first place or get knocked off by someone else.

So I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I at least hope to make you stop and think a bit. Think about what you want and why you want it. Are you happy with what you have? If not, instead of trying to fix it by getting more stuff (which will ultimately leave you unsatisfied), find a way to be happy with what you have.

I don't know about you but I'm most happy when I'm close to Jesus. I think about my God's awesome love and compassion and grace and I can't be really anything but thrilled.