Unity and Happiness

Unity and happiness


When people claim that they are happy, but they are usually not. As long as there is conflict in Darfur, as long as children are dying in Gaza, in Sri Lanka, in the slums of third world countries, there can be no happiness anywhere. If we are truly connected by bonds of brotherhood, I cannot be happy as long as my brothers and sisters living in other parts of the world are not happy. I cannot be happy as long as innocent men are being executed, as long as murder and mayhem are the order of the day in the world, as long as there is disunity in the world. This is not the world I want to live in: I want to live in a world full of happiness.


Happiness is not a horse. It does not run along a straight path. It always takes a zigzag route. The problem is that we wait for happiness to knock on our doorsteps, we wait for someone to make us happy. The truth is that we are yearning for happiness. We want to be happy, we can do anything to be happy. Although we make every possible effort to be happy, not all our actions result in happiness: happiness follows a zigzag path. The problem is that we don't know which of our actions would give us happiness and how much happiness would our actions yield. We spend a large part of our lives in useless efforts to gain a bit of happiness. What we fail to realise is that true happiness in one's life is giving. Happiness could never be achieved unless one parts with one’s time, skills, resources, money and at the very least, with one's thoughts. We all probably do several things that can be defined as acts of giving, but when the whole world mindfully decides to give, there is a good chance of things being larger than the sum total of its parts: it would result in the happiness of the whole world.

The whole world could be made happy, World Happiness could thus be created, and finally the goal of world unity and world peace would be achieved: satisfaction and happiness would ultimately prevail in the whole of humanity. This is how we can make can contribute to our efforts to make a huge difference to the whole lot of humanity. We need to fill the pot of humanity with every drop of happiness that we have, each drop would contribute to the ocean of happiness that the world yearns for. Happiness is one of the easiest things to achieve, if only we knew the secret of being happy.

The secret of being happy lies in giving. Giving something fills us with more happiness than anything else in the world: a culture of giving ought to be promoted to create happiness, to make every individual in the world happy and content. The whole of humanity could be made happy if the culture of giving were promoted among the entire humanity. Humanity ought to practice the principles of giving even at the individual level: individuals should not accept happiness, they should believe in giving happiness.

Happiness thus gained should not be momentary like the happiness one experiences while appreciating a piece of art. Watching a movie, reading a book, or painting a portrait does give us a bit of aesthetic happiness, but this happiness fades with time. This is like eating an ice-cream: it must to be enjoyed before it melts. At the end of the day, our happiness fades, and we emerge as the same old discontented lot that began in the morning. What we need at the moment is everlasting happiness, happiness that would remain with us for a long time, happiness should remain with us for eternity.

Eternal happiness could only be achieved if we lived in harmony. Harmony among the individuals would spell as individual happiness, harmony among the members of a family spells as familial bliss just as social bliss translates from unity among the members of the society. The concept of unity could work miracles in the world if only it were injected in the veins of every being on earth. On a similar note, love, unity, fraternity, peace, and charity could infuse a dose of infallible happiness in the whole world: unity among the different nations of the world would translate as happiness in the entire world.

Happiness is really worth all the hue and cry that we make. Happiness is the ultimate goal of all our efforts; whatever we do, we do to be happy. We must strive for unity and peace in our lives for the sake of happiness. Our efforts at achieving happiness should be directed at achieving peace and unity. Marital unity is the key to marital happiness, unity among the members of a family could translate as familial happiness, and social unity could always mean social happiness. Unity of the nation would mean national happiness, the entire nation would be happy, and world unity would mean world happiness. Efforts at achieving world happiness could yield impressive results, but before doing this, individuals need to be made happy, individuals need to be united, there should be peace among the individuals, there should be mutual understanding among us.

When you really feel understood by someone, and you feel that you understand them, there's a feeling of oneness and unity that is indescribable. Gaining that basic understanding and unity is one of the most important steps in making a relationship successful. Successful relationships are always happy.

To be happy, one doesn't need to put in a lot of effort, one only has to use his mind, and ponder on how unity and peace could be brought to the world. We can at best augment the chaos around us, or begin by working around the existing mess. These ideas and concepts seem rather idealistic and unrealistic, but so did the concept of a railway engine when it was first thought of by James Watt. Unlike the invention of James Watt, the concept of world unity could be the saviour of mankind and the whole world. In this sense, we certainly have modernised, and come to the 20th century.