Happy International Day of Happiness
Did you know that International Day of Happiness is celebrated on 20 March? This year's theme for the International Day of Happiness is 'Build Back Happier' marking the shared struggles and global recuperation from the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn't know about this until I received the following email from Becky at Twinkl.
March 20 is International Happiness Day. How can we be happy during trials, challenges and suffering? Just open the news and most of it is depressing. Broken relationships, failed dreams, financial problems… they just suck the happiness out of life.
Well contrary to popular belief, happiness is not only "all about me" or "all about my loved ones". Here's a new-but-not-actually-new concept that you might like to consider: Happiness is taking action.
What does this mean? You see, happiness is a choice. A choice made through power of will, though inevitably affected by external circumstances and our personal beliefs. Real happiness – the one that makes you smile from your heart and soul – cannot be achieved when it is rooted in pure selfishness and actions that cause trouble, misery and suffering to others.
Rather, happiness can be achieved despite the troubles surrounding us when we take concrete and wise actions, not the actions of running away from problems, hiding from problems or purposely ignoring problems. These actions require courage, determination, and persistence – along with a good dose of anger and tears sometimes – to fix broken relationships, to work harder to put food on the table, to get rid of personal ego and arrogance to do what's right, to take action to help others, to go on that journey to pursue your dreams.
But how can I be happy when my best friend is suffering, or a stranger halfway across the world is going through so much pain? It seems almost cruel to be happy in this situation!
Look. Empathy is having the ability to understand and share the feeling of others. And this means that obviously we shouldn't be laughing, dancing and jumping for joy in front of a friend who is crying (unless our purpose is to make them laugh). In this case, we can take action by comforting them, listening to them, giving them a shoulder to cry on. By doing so, we bring happiness on ourselves knowing that even though we're sharing their sadness, we actually did something to help them.
And think about this: If we wallow in sadness for something that doesn't actually affect our living being, are we actually helping the people we feel sad for? Does us being sad for them in our room help make their lives better? No. Instead, if we do something about it to help them, it is those actions that will help make their lives better. By maintaining our own emotional balance, we can transmit that energy to help them get better. Practice empathy, but stay happy in your heart.
It's true that we gain more happiness when we give happiness away. Though not necessarily the happiness that we think should be, i.e. smiling, laughing, jumping around with joy. That's only one part of happiness. A person can be smiling and laughing but crying inside – we will never know unless they tell us. Likewise, just because a person is not smiling and laughing, does not necessarily mean that the person is unhappy.
Happiness can come in other forms too, like a certain kind of deep satisfaction one gets after putting in the time and effort working hard on something, or the happiness that makes you smile from your heart knowing that you've done a good deed by bringing happiness to another living thing. Making the good and right choices, and living at peace with yourself AND your surroundings can also contribute to happiness in the heart and soul.
Another important factor is this: pay attention to what you're feeding to your soul. Our soul is the crux of our existence, and if the soul is unhappy, the human can never be truly happy.
So this international day of happiness, we'd like to wish you the best of luck on your journey to achieving happiness. If things are not going so well in your life right now, cry, scream and grieve if necessary. Set a time limit for the grieving period – one hour, one day, one week, one month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year – and when that time is up, pick up the pieces and begin a new chapter of your life. It's time to move on and work hard again. Life goes on just as the sun keeps shining.
Footnote
Note: The article above is from the EDM from Twinkl. Twinkl, founded by Susie and Jonathan Seaton in 2010 is a platform of educational resources that can be used at each step of a child's learning journey. With over 525,000 teacher-created resources, you could find schemes of work, lesson planning and assessments right through to online educational games, augmented reality and so much more.
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