Maybe The Secret To Happiness Is Trying To Make Others Happy

By

Imagine being friendless one day, being all alone and feeling like no one cares about you. This can be mentally destructive to an individual as time passes. Having friends is important as friends share your joy and your sorrows when you need a shoulder to lean on. But what if your friend is someone who likes to tell you your problems are not real problems and that you should get over it, grow up or be mature? Will you still feel like telling your friends about your problems in future? Or rather, will you still feel like sharing your problems with any of your friends ever again if this happens consistently?

Given this situation, most would feel that it’s better to keep their thoughts to themselves and eventually, they don’t share anything to anyone anymore. The feeling of, “I don’t matter,” lingers and the feeling that, “Other have worse problems compared to mine,” overpowers the individual to the point that he or she will not share their problems with those around them and prefer to keep it to themselves. Honestly, it is not your fault. It’s not a blame any of us should take. It’s simply the way society shaped each individual and vice versa.

Now, why do people like to compare others’ sufferings? Why can’t they view and listen to each problem objectively and try to be a little less judgemental? It seems that this became a norm in the society today. Consider a situation of a wealthy man and a middle-class man. Both of their houses were burnt down and the wealthy man’s house was a mansion whereas that of the middle-class was a terrace house. Now the middle-class man talks to the wealthy man about his loss and upon hearing his thoughts, the wealthy man told him, “You simply lost a terrace house. I lost a mansion! All my expensive and beautiful drawings and sculptures are all gone!”

The middle-class man kept quiet immediately.

In this situation, to many of us, it would seem that the wealthy man did suffer a greater deal of loss compared to the middle-class man but what we often fail to notice is the emotional suffering. Both of them did suffer losses but emotionally, both of them lost their homes. It is an emotional suffering which shouldn’t be judged and compared by outsiders in the first place. Both of them would have felt equal amount of emotional pain and both would need to find comfort. So why is it that when we look at people like them, we offer to listen only to those we deemed have suffer greater physical and monetary loss?

Some say the world is cruel and ruthless but despite that, I believe there are people out there who are still kind and pleasant. These people are people with good intentions with good souls. While we struggle to find guardian angels for ourselves, let’s all be reminded that we should try, at least, to be a guardian angel to some people. Even if it’s for a few, it will make a big difference and impact their life in a positive way that is unimaginable to us.