Happiness

What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.

- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama 

Happy and Useful.  I've never thought of it like this.  What is happiness if it is of no use to yourself, or more appropriately to someone else?  What good is happiness if you've lost everything you once had?

I am happy.  I share my happiness with the people I come across.  I share it by being helpful, pleasant in my interactions, and being there for my friends through thick and thin.  By doing this, I get pleasure from my every day encounters.  I feel like this helps me in every aspect of my life.  It helps my depression, it helps my mood, it helps me keep my temper at bay, it helps me relate to people.  For me, being happy helps me to BE useful.  Being useful helps to MAKE me happy.

Through all of the recent changes in my life, I've realized that my happiness is not dependent on one person.  There are lots of people that make me happy, and those that don't have no significant role in my life anymore.  Friendship, and relationships are a two way street.  Each person involved in each relationship, whether it is a friendship or a romantic relationship has a duty to make sure that the other is happy.  If this breaks down on either side, the friendship or relationship cracks.  Sometimes beyond repair.  

I'm not saying that you have to spend every second of your life trying to make others happy, but I believe that by taking a few minutes out of your day to try and improve someones day, even just a little bit, will make you a happier person.  When you do for someone else, they will do for you.  No matter what kind of relationship you have.  

Without being useful to someone else, without sharing your wealth of happiness, what good is having it at all?