The Secret of True Happiness in Life and the Concept of Change and Self - Term Paper Example

17 November The Secret of True Happiness in Life & the Concept of Change and Self As human beings, materialism is our weakness. We fall for things, for power, money and authority. At different stages in life, we want different things. We derive pleasure from different kinds of activities and want to attain different kinds of things. Having reflected upon my life, I have realized that it was fundamentally material that I always craved for. As a toddler, then as a teenager and then as an adult, I have been wanting one thing or another, but nothing made me feel happier than when I learnt the most important secret of life – selflessness! As a child, I had a craze for the Barbie Dolls. I had a lot of them. Although I have very vivid idea of the dreams I used to see when I was only four or five years old, yet I have never forgotten one of them. In the first, one of my Barbie Dolls had the power to fly. She was flying over the mountains and glided through the corridors of my school. Along the way came a stream and she swam through its water and reemerged on the other side to take the flight again. Our dreams are to much an extent a reflection of our thoughts. Rene Descartes rightly said, “I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake” (“Rene Descartes Quotes” 1). When I woke up, I was mesmerized. I wanted to fly like my Barbie Doll. The feel of flying was so lovely and refreshing that I can still sense the pleasance when I am recounting those moments. Two days after that was my birthday. I expressed my wish to dad that I would like to have wings as my birthday present. Surprised, he asked me what I would do with the wings. I said I would fly. So on my birthday, he flew me from Texas to California in the airplane. That was my best birthday present ever. As I grew up, I started to take interest in jewelry. I used to make jewelry from clay. I killed most of my time making jewels. I had become so addicted to them that my studies began to suffer. Realizing that my attention was a little too directed towards this hobby of mine, my parents forced me to concentrate upon the studies. My mother used to take the clay and would never return it to me until I was done with my homework. That didn’t felt good in the start, but gradually as my declining academic performance began to improve, I started to regain my confidence that I had lost lately. When I was in my late teenage, I wanted to have a beauty salon of my own. I wanted to have money, and a lot of that. One day, I thought what success in the life is. If success is to be pretty, I was successful. If success means achieving good position in the class, I had been successful for most of my academic career. If success means being independent, I pretty much was already. One day, I conducted a lot of search to know what success is. I went through a lot of articles, quotations, magazines, digests and books. Amongst all definitions that I read, one that appealed to me the most was that success is happiness. I questioned myself if I was really happy. I quickly reviewed all I had, and realized that I had much more than most people my age had, but still, there was something missing. Normally, people associate that something with love. But I had been in a very trustworthy and nice relationship for quite a while, and I knew whom I would marry. My cravings for love were already satisfied, still there was something that lacked in me. I would like to give away everything I had in life to achieve that something because having so much without that made me feel like I had nothing. I consent with Jean-Paul Sartre who said, “Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal” (“Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes” 2). One day, as I was walking across the street, I found a puppy with an injured leg. It was moaning and its leg was bleeding. Perhaps it had been caught in some machine or something, I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I took that puppy to my home, washed its leg, applied a diluted antiseptic solution and took it to a veteran. I paid $20 from my personal pocket-money for its treatment. I took care of the puppy for some days, and once its leg was healed, I set it free. As soon as I freed him, I gained a feeling of achievement. It was an internal happiness. This achievement had enlightened me from the inside and I was truly feeling happy. This was the very “something” I had been trying to define for long – my internal happiness. Such a happiness was rare to come, and I had experienced it not very often. But one thing that I was sure about that this happiness comes from selflessness, from the tendency to love and care for others, and from the tendency to give rather than take. In order to be sure that this was really what I was wanting for long but couldn’t understand, I did some social work. I gave charity, and distributed eatables and gifts among the orphans and the needy. Every time, I did something for the others, I would have the same feeling again. This feeling of happiness and satisfaction was stronger and longer-lasting than the feeling of satisfaction and/or happiness that I had had when I had received my best birthday present, or by making clay jewels, or by making money. If success means being happy, I had just realized what happiness means and what it takes to be successful! There are a lot of new technologies that humans have invented on the basis of the knowledge that the people a 100 years ago had never seen or used. With the evolution of technology, people have become more and more materialistic. Everything has changed with time. Even our own thoughts, preferences, likes and dislikes keep changing with time. Just like we never look the same, we never want the same. As children, we live in a world of fantasy. As we grow up, we want to be important and lure ourselves. We want to gain power, money, and love. As children and young adults, we think that money is the solution to every problem, but as we age further, we get to know that money can’t buy happiness. We realize that happiness and satisfaction was never in the things we had always been craving for. Socrates said, “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature” (“Socrates Quotes” 1). I completely agree with Socrates. If being rich made one happy, no rich person would every have been unhappy, but we see that it is generally the rich people who become the victims of depression and anxiety. Agreed that money helps us achieve our goals, but our goals may not always be what we really want. It is human nature. All human beings need satisfaction and happiness, and that is in selflessness. The sooner we realize this fundamental secret of life, the sooner we start to live a happy and fulfilling life. Works Cited: “Socrates Quotes.” 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. . “Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes.” BrainyQuote. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. . “Rene Descartes Quotes.” 2011. BrainyQuote. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. . Read More