Don't Be Vulnerable!

September 14, 2005

BE HAPPY ZONE

By Lionel Ketchian

When you are unhappy, you are choosing the worst possible state imaginable. Being unhappy exposes you to being defenseless! Being unhappy makes you lose your power, and you have allowed yourself to become unprotected. You begin to feel helpless and hopeless. When you feel unhappy, you are feeling unshielded and unsafe. You have allowed yourself to become vulnerable.

This feeling of vulnerability makes you feel tense and irritable. You become nervous and guarded. You become overly sensitive to every little thing that happens. Once you allow yourself to choose to be unhappy, you are susceptible to the worst things happening to you. Vulnerability is the cause of many of our problems.

When you consider that I am a happy person, you might say to yourself, so what? I agree with you that it does not sound like any big deal. Now, let's consider another person for a moment. Let's consider a teenager who is happy. Again you might think, so what? Well, let's consider for a moment that this person is not unhappy. You still say, okay, so he or she is not unhappy, so what? Well, the fact that you and I are not unhappy, or that the teenager is not unhappy is an extremely big deal. Why? It is an incredible thing because when people are unhappy they want to hurt others, to feel better about themselves.

Unhappy people think about harming other people. In fact they not only think about it, they are more likely to act out their feelings and attack others. Unhappiness causes people to want to negatively harm other people. Happy people on the other hand want to share their happiness with others. They want to be friendly and in turn help others become happier. It is a natural effect of a happy person to want others to be happy as well. Whereas, an unhappy person feels vulnerable and will react by having thoughts of harming others. The happy person does not have feelings of vulnerability and does not think of harming others.

Oscar Wilde made an excellent point when he said, "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." The world is safer with happy people. We need to begin educating people in schools and in groups to the positive effects of being happy. By being happy, we create a safer world. We need to become aware of the deadly effects of unhappiness and the feeling of vulnerability that accompanies it. By not choosing to be unhappy we can learn to behave better, because we will not be having the experience of feeling vulnerable.

Bertrand Russell said, "Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy . . . Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other peopleÕs happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race." The fact is that when you are unhappy everybody loses. When you are happy everybody wins. Happiness is a win/win situation. Only a happy person could want happiness for others. You have to have happiness to be able to give it away.

Our next Happiness Club meeting will be a presentation by international documentary photographer Daryl Hawk who will present a slide show and lecture entitled: ÒThe Last Shangri-La.Ó Mr. Hawk will share his nonstop, day-to-day adventures, experiences, discoveries, and valuable lessons learned on this incredibly spiritual journey through this last Shangri-La, in which the national motto is Ògross national happiness.Ó

This past November Mr. Hawk spent a month alone traversing from west to east through the mythical and medieval kingdom of Bhutan. Bhutan is hidden, high away in the Himalayas. Photographs of dramatic and rarely seen landscapes, stunning Buddhist monasteries and fortresses, ancient secret religious ceremonies and festivals, the KingÕs birthday celebration and the lifestyles of the people who inhabit this kingdom will all be highlighted in this presentation.

The meeting is Thursday, September 15, from 7:00 - 8:45 p.m. at the newly renovated Fairfield Public Library, in the new 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, check the web site or 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.thehappinessshow.com and www.happinessclub.com.