Why are you not happy?

This is a very simple question that speaks volumes about who we are and the attitude that determines our happiness. Life’s lessons has explored and come to a simple conclusion that happiness is not out there, it cannot be given to us. We are either happy or we are not. Happiness cannot be sold or bought neither can it be wished on someone or self. It can neither be given nor be forced on someone or self. Happiness cannot be earned through marriage nor can possession of money or material things ensure it. So what is happiness and why is it so illusive to so many of us in spite of who we are and what we have achieved? Why is happiness so difficult to come by, no matter how we desire it?

The Positive Psychologist, Sonja Lyubomirsky describes happiness as “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combine with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.” The synonyms of happiness are: pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, cheerfulness, merriment, gaiety, joy, joyfulness, joviality, jollity, glee, delight, good spirit, lightheartedness, well-being, enjoyment, elation, ecstasy, jubilation, rapture, bliss euphoria, and what have you. There are many reasons why you do not feel happy and excited about life. Many people, on the other hand, would do anything to prevent their happiness and the happiness of others. Sad though, some of them may not even know that that is their mission: to frustrate others. They are so used to being sad that happiness is nothing but Greek to their ears. Here are some reasons:

1.     You have neglected yourself: Spend some time in front of the mirror and see who and what you see and not who or what you want to see. Look long enough and see yourself with the lines that are drawn out on your face, see your sad self and ask yourself a question, why do I look this way? Now spend sometime in prayer; pray for the gift of discernment so that you may change your ways and begin to live as God intended for you. Accept who you are and be at peace with yourself. Know that God is not done with you yet. You are still His work of art. Be patient and know that you do not have to be perfect, neither should you expect any other person to be. We are always in the process of becoming who God wants us to be, but we have to cooperate with Him. Grace builds on nature. If you allow God, He will work with you so that you may be happy with who you are.

2.         You are always right, or so you want to be. You are not happy because you are always right and every other person is always wrong. What a life! Why is being right so important to you? No wonder you are not happy and God knows how those who live and work with you must feel. Because you have spent your entire life and energy trying to prove how right you are at all times, you have alienated your children and friends from yourself. You find it difficult to have and keep friends; who can be a friend to Mr. or Ms. Right. To have a friend, you need to be a friend. Try to accept you friends for who they are. Please do not try to turn them into you. Learn to tolerate your friends. Do not always prove to them how right you are and how wrong they are. Why not try to be wrong at times, after all, there are words like ‘mistake’ and ‘wrong’ in the dictionary. If we were meant to be always right and not make mistakes every now and then, I am sure such words would not have been thought of in the first place. Being right always makes you sad and unhappy.

3.       You are not happy because you are always complaining of one thing or the other. Your nagging spirit drives away your peace of mind and deprives you of happiness. If you want to be happy stop complaining, refuse to nag and begin to appreciate people. Give them credit for their scanty triumphs in your life. No man is an island. No matter who you are today, some people contributed towards your achievements. The word ‘love’ is real; put it into practice. Think less of yourself and your accomplishments. Remember that without God you are nothing. All that you are and all that you have are gifts from God, not for yourself alone but for others to also benefit from your gifts. By seeing the good in others you will begin to see the good in yourself and happiness will make an in road to your life.

4.         You are not happy because you have refused to change and accept change. The world has moved on and left you behind. It’s like you were asleep while others were awake and going about their normal business. Now that you are awake, you want to drag everyone down. This is a sure way to remain in the kingdom of sadness and unhappiness, and you know what? This is exactly what hell looks like! Sleepers, awake, arise and shine and let the Lord shine on you. Get out of your house, smell the roses, watch the birds flying and enjoy their melodious tunes, their songs of praise to their God. Borrow a leave from them. Thank God for your many blessings. Be grateful, for though the world is messy and at times scary, it is still a beautiful world. When you are at peace with yourself and with others, happiness will be yours forever. Don’t worry then, be happy! 

How do you prepare for your demise or do you?

A cursor glance or a mere observation of life and nature reveals to us, mentally or instinctively if not naturally that the end of all living things on earth is death. This fact is brought home to us by the many losses that we have experienced in our lives. We suffered our first loss when we were ‘ejected’ from, pushed or ‘forced’ out of the comfort of our mother’s womb at birth. That, no doubt, was the reason for our first cry, which also demonstrated to our mother that we were alive. We did not shed tears of joy but a protest for depriving us of a comfortable and cozy life; a deprivation of an insulated life in an environment that we did not have to work for anything. Our needs were met automatically just by being alive in our mother’s womb. From the day of our birth we knew that many more losses awaited us. Very soon our first tooth as babies would be taken by ‘the tooth fairy’.  From then on gamut of losses would be our lot in life, the most painful of it would be the demise of our parents. Dare I say it? Our own demise would one day follow. So death is not so foreign to us.  We may know about death but to mentally receive it and practically and materially prepare for it may not be easy to conceptualize. It is easier, you will agree, to think of the demise of others than to imagine our end. But Life’s lesson assures us that as the night follows the day one day will be our turn. How prepared are you for that day?

We pray for our departed loved ones always especially in the month of November. We pray for them because many of them died in mysterious and strange circumstances. Many did not prepare for their demise; neither did they know that the day of their death was their ‘D’ Day. Plane crash? Deadly auto crash? Shipwreck?  Bomb blast? Terrorist attack? House engulfed in flames while occupants were asleep? Stray bullets? Irresponsible and reckless use of guns to settle scores and grievances?  We pray for mercy on their souls, that they find peace with the Lord. Their death, apart from being sad, should serve as a warning for us. On the need to be prepared for our day of reckoning let us listen to the Gospel of Luke 13:1-5: “At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” The lesson we must learn from the dead is that the same destiny awaits us all at the end and the foundation of our final home in the world is sixth below mother earth.

The month of November will soon come to an end and the hustling and bustling of the festive season is right around the corner. Our attention is once again drawn to the need to be prepared as we being the season of Advent. We must think eschatologically: that is thoughts of the final events of history or the ultimate destiny of all living things on earth. Let us take the words of Jesus as recorded in Luke’s Gospel 12:35-40 to heart and ponder them day and night: “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” What else can I tell you?

So how must we prepare for our demise? Here are some tips.

1.     Read and put the following Bible references into action: the Gospel of Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7,18 and 25.

2.     Do not forget that reconciliation and peaceful co-habitation should still be the guiding principles for all and sundry.

3.     Prophet Micah 6:8 reminds us thus: “You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.

4.     Remember that being a Christian is not what we say but what we do. Christianity, therefore, is an action word. Let us be Christians in word and in deed. Know that we are all created in the image and likeness of God: even your enemy was created in the image and likeness of God. The poor, the sick, the homeless and those in jail are all God’s children; they deserve care and love from you. They may be the ones to plead on your behalf before the throne of Grace. Do not ignore them! Do to no one what you do not want done to you.

5.     In his letter to Titus 3:1-7 Paul asked Titus to “Remind your people that it is their duty to be obedient to the officials and representatives of the government; to be ready to do good at every opportunity; not to go slandering other people or picking quarrels, but to be courteous and always polite to all kinds of people.”

I am sure if we observe the aforementioned, not forgetting our prayer and sacramental life and doing our best at all times, we should not be afraid of death. Dying then would be for us a transition to a better life, a life with God.

Love entails Suffering

 We have heard people say many times, “there is not a crown without a cross”. This means is that nothing comes easy. There is no wishful thinking in being successful. If you want to be successful, work for it! If a student does not burn the mid-night oil, success in an examination may elude him/her as legs eluded the proverbial serpent. If you want something, go for it. If you want it bad enough, put in the time and work at it twice as hard. It is foolhardiness and indeed senseless to be jealous of someone who works hard to be successful while you rest on your oars thinking that the success should be yours.

In his Sunday Homilies, Year A, Mark Link, SJ wrote about Arthur Godfrey who had a sign on his office wall that read: “The fire, Lord, not the scrap heap.” Godfrey, according to Mark Link, said that the sign reminded him of a story about a blacksmith who suffered much illness but still maintained a strong faith in God. When unbeliever asked the blacksmith bow he could keep trusting God in spite of his illness, he replied: “When I make a tool, I take a piece of iron and put it in the fire. Then I strike it on the anvil to see if it can take temper. If it does, I can make a useful article out of it. If not, I toss it on the scrap heap”. Jeremiah the prophet alluded to this in the 18^th chapter of his prophecy, “I went to the potter’s house and there he was, working at the wheel. Whenever the object of clay, which he was making turns out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel”.  

Chastisement, punishment and suffering are part of life. No one enjoys suffering or chastisement when he/she undergoes it but at the end the person may begin to see the purpose of it. Jesus calls chastisement pruning. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit”, John 15:1-2.

To show how much God loves us, he sent his only Son to redeem us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” Jn. 3:16. For Mark Link, “the crucifixion acts as a dramatic sign of Jesus’s great love for us. “The greatest love a person can have for his friends”, said Jesus, “is to give his life for them,”” Through his death Jesus invites us to show same love for others. He urges us not to be afraid of suffering even for the sins of others. For it is in suffering that we gain eternal life.

The problem is that we often run away from the fire and then end up in the scrap heap. Look at our prisons; most of those in these facilities would not have ended up there if they had taken the hard road and not the easy way to success. When parents abdicate their roles and responsibilities as parents, stop disciplining their children and allow them to grow wild, eventually the long arm of the law will catch up with them and they will end up in the grip of the police, the judge and in jail.

Love should not be confused with discipline. Proverbs 12:1 reminds us that “He who loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid”. When there is love, discipline and good values in the family, it is easy for a child to avoid the pitfalls of life. Love and discipline are not diametrically opposed but complimentary.  If you love me do not spare me the embarrassment of correcting me at home. You will prevent me from the shame of making that mistake in public. According to an African proverb a mentally deranged person brings shame to his family by behaving abnormally in public. Let us take warning from the book of Proverbs 13:24 which reads, “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. Love does not condone evil but stands up for the truth no matter how painful it may be. This painful and tough love may seem hard but very redemptive indeed. Are you prepared to show tough love to your friends, your children and even yourself?

Unless you become like children, there is no heaven for you!

Life’s lesson made it clear that the future belongs to our children. Any generation that messes with children messes with the future. Children, therefore, are the greater tomorrow. If we sow in our children today a bountiful harvest awaits us tomorrow. Therefore, a Church that has no children is a dead Church.

Someone asked me once why I love children. My answer was simple: children are innocent, sincere, honest and straightforward. They are not ambitious, spiteful and proud. If they like you, you will know and if they do not like you, by George, they won’t even come close to you, or they will simply tell you they do not like you. There is no deceit in children. They do not know how to hate or bear a grudge. They can fight with their friends one minute and before you know it, they have made up and are playing and chatting as if they never fought. For children, a black child and a white child are all the same. Any child that begins to hate, be deceitful and spiteful has grown in a family or an environment where those bad habits and attitudes are prevalent. Since children pick up what they see from adults, they begin to act accordingly.

In answering the question of who was the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven Jesus demonstrated thus: “he called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me” Mt. 18:1-5.

Children are dependent on their parents or guardians. They trust and look up to those who take care of them. There is nothing that a child has that is not given to him/her by his/her parents or guardians. A child has no money of his/her own, no bank account, no credit card, no car or home to pay mortgage on. And yet all his/her needs are provided for. If she is hungry, she asks for food, if she is sick, she tells the mother. When her clothes are dirty, the mother takes care of them. All the child needs to do is to be alive and her cares are in the hands of her/his parents or guardians. This is how Christ wants us to relate to God, since he is our Father. He urges us to depend on God for our needs. Listen: “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds in the sky they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them” Mt. 6:25.

We must therefore, be childlike and not childish. We must be humble and unassuming, innocent and sincere; be honest and straightforward in our dealing with one another. If there is a quarrel, like children, we should be quick in making up. Trust and depend on God for our needs. Be kind and forgiving and be fast in sharing what we have with others then the Kingdom of heaven will be ours for the asking. Good luck as you think seriously about the above life’s lesson.