The path to happiness [Archives:2006/912/Education]

HUSSEIN AL-NOORI
Each one of us thinks and feels differently about the meaning of happiness and the ways and means of achieving it. However, we can generalize and say that to most of us happiness involves a positive feeling and a sense of fulfillment.

We may, at times be helpless with regard to the obstacles we can not overcome or causes of unhappiness that are beyond us when they are part of that tough and cruel outside world, weird circumstances and accident, or people who are indifferent to us. Still good deal of that sense of achievement comes from within us.

The achievement of happiness starts with overcoming the host of negative emotions like anger, anxiety, fear, helplessness that stand in the way of the very first steps towards happiness. They are feelings that stand in our way of feeling and thinking and acting positively. They are factors that practically immobilize us. Think of the many times when your feeling of shyness prevented you from meeting people you love. Isn't it tue that feeling of hatred or jealousy kept you from sleep? Haven't there been times when you felt the urge to sit in the house all day doing nothing and simply bored?Weren't there moments when anger kept you from thinking clearly and made you say something abusive to someone you love?

Though certain negative emotions may, at times, pay off such as shouting at a child in an angry voice to emphasize that we don't want him to play in the street, yet if we shout at others because we are internally upset, then we are losing ourselves to a negative emotion. This is one of those times when we have to think of alternatives, to break away from the chain and of those emotions that, consciously or unconsciously, immobilize us. These are moments when we are robbed of those emotions that warm our hearts and souls, feelings that provide us with the sense of fulfillment we call happiness.
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