July 26, 2006
BE HAPPY ZONE
By Lionel Ketchian

I read the July 17th issue of New York Magazine with the words: "How To Be Happy," by Jennifer Senior, in big letters on the front cover. I turned to page 26 to read the article and found the following title: "Some Dark Thoughts On Happiness." My disappointment began with those words and increased with the rest of article.

On page 30 the following quote was included: "It seems to me, anyone who could maintain a state of happiness given the state of the world, is LIVING IN A DELUSION." I agree the state of the world is not that great right now, but it has been in that state for quite some time during the history of our civilization.

The problem is thinking that you need to be unhappy because the state of the world is the way it is. That is where our thinking becomes faulty. Just because things are not good, does not mean we have to be unhappy. That is equivalent to remembering when we were children and our mother told us to finish the food on our plate because people were starving in other countries. Do you see the logic in that? Well, the logic is that if things are not going well around you, than you had better be unhappy or you don't care about what is happening.

The primary reason for people to be unhappy is to show that they are good people who care about what is happening to others. Their rationale is to care for other people by being unhappy, so people will know that they are a good person. As Oscar Wilde said: "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."

The logic is flawed because being unhappy is not a solution to anything. In fact, it adds to the problem. When you hear about bad news, you can make yourself feel bad, creating a sense of helplessness that leads to hopelessness and then more despair as you gradually find your way to feeling like a victim and finally becoming totally depressed.

Unhappy people cause many of the problems we experience in the world. A terrorist is an unhappy person. What we really don't need more of are unhappy people. I understand that it will be hard for unhappy people to comprehend this, and not many people are happy, so there are a great many people who will not see the logic in all this.

Dennis Prager, author of Happiness Is a Serious Problem, said: "To be happy requires knowledge about how to achieve happiness (i.e. wisdom) and hard work and self-discipline to put that knowledge into practice.

My point is that being happy is the most important thing you can do for yourself around and for those around you. Wars have played out over the history of mankind in order to have peace. Fighting alone does not seem to work. I am not making any judgements about the Middle East situation, I am saying that all people want to be happy. We need to have more dialogs about our commonality of happiness.

Soren Kierkegaard said: "' If an Arab in the desert were suddenly to discover a spring in his tent, and so would always be able to have water in abundance, how fortunate he would consider himself; so too, when a man who...is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him."

I know that politicians are not trained to spread a greater understanding of happiness and human nature. It will be very important for the future of mankind to better understand and utilize happiness. I would like to refer to happiness as emotional competence. Intelligence alone does not seem to work in reducing conflict. We need to facilitate better emotional control. We need to stamp out ignorance with education, not just with weapons of destruction. In the great words of R. Browning: "Oh, make us happy and you make us good."

I am not saying we must stop using weapons of war. I am saying that we can no longer depend on just using weapons. We must combine weapons with wisdom and communication with commonality. It is time to learn that life does not always go the way we would like it to and that developing more emotional control for all of us would be a higher level strategy for coping with the problems of life.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: "It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."

Our next Happiness Club meeting will be Thursday, August 17, from 7:00 - 9:00 P.M. at the Fairfield Public Library, in the Rotary Room at 1080 Old Post Road, Fairfield. Meet some wonderful people using happiness in their lives. Admission is free; everyone is welcome. For further information call Lionel Ketchian at 203 258-7777.

Lionel Ketchian is the founder of the Happiness Club and can be reached at PrintLRK@aol.com. The Web site is www.happinessclub.com.