How to Find Happiness?

of great deprivation or adversity. The best way to deal with this situation is simply to accept it, and then to consider what its positive aspects could possibly be. Firstly, our being able to accept such a situation shows a strengthening of the mind and a firming up of the character. Then the process we go through to overcome each difficulty in turn is like the successive fine-honing of tempered steel, or the burnishing of base metal until it shines like gold. When we forget about happiness and apply ourselves to the task in hand, we elevate ourselves to a superior plane of human existence, and it is often at that point, when we least expect it, that we find that happiness is ours. To expect happiness to be a continuing state, however, is to indulge in illusions. It is something which can come and go, for no rhyme or reason, and constant preoccupation with one’s state of unhappiness is likely to plunge one even deeper into despair. The absence of happiness, should be accepted, ignored or treated as something to be turned to positive account as a matter of experience. It should never be allowed to make one bitter. It should be considered that if a state of happiness does not last forever, neither does a state of unhappiness. The worst error to fall into is to become preoccupied with one’s own happiness to the exclusion of all else. It is more often in giving one’s mind, one’s affection, one’s attention, one’s resources—one’s very life—to others, that one finds true happiness. The General Good The saying goes that one day the Emperor Akbar said to his chief courtier Birbal: “Birbal, how good it would be if a monarch remained a monarch forever.” Birbal replied: “Your Majesty, you are right. But if this were to happen, how could you have been a monarch today?”