If you are happy and you know it, you are lucky

Sometimes I wonder what it would take to make someone happy. Really happy. Don’t get me wrong… I’m a Christian, so that’s a given. Without faith in something higher than oneself, life would be rather pointless. Without a framework… even the simple one that Jesus suggested… “love God and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself”… or something close to that. Even that framework of behavior is effective… and would make most of us happy.

As long as God is on my side, behind me, looking out for my good… then there is a comfort or happiness that can override even the cruelest times. Slavery, the Holocaust, pandemics of all dimensions,… living through these times is hard, but human beings who have faith that times will get better and the energy to make them better… these people are happy.

Of course, happiness can be based on selfish desires. We can justify bad behavior by thinking that God wants us to do something that is intrinsically evil. World War II was brought on by a group of people thinking they were doing right… cleansing the world of the imperfect, taking what should have been theirs… supporting a man who had faith, not in God, but in power. We are shocked by those people who believe that power will bring happiness… at any cost.

Right now, in Ukraine the powers of evil are trying to overtake good. Not every Ukrainian is good. Not every Russian is evil. But not many people are happy in that part of the world. Good Russians have been told that Ukraine is siding with the US against them… to take away Russia’s leaders, their power, their happiness. Now, Norway and Sweden have stepped up and sided with NATO… not to be safe… thus happy. It’s complicated.

It’s easy to see the world in black and white. Ukraine good: Russia bad. But when we look at the world close to home, the lines are harder to define. It’s not hard to love our neighbors who live near us… unless they have a bad dog and a short fence. It’s not hard to love the checker at the convenience store… unless she wears a hijab and doesn’t worship like we do. It’s not hard to love the players on the football team from the other side of the river… unless they win too much. Unless we try to get to know these “neighbors,” understand what they value, find out what makes them happy, we will not find happiness for ourselves.

Most of us live our lives looking for happiness. We’d all be a little happier if we were debt free, wrinkle free, and popular. We have shelves full of books trying to make us richer, more beautiful, and likeable… when the only one getting rich are the authors of those books. Maybe we want to find love. We spend a lot of time trying to find Mr. Right or Ms. Gorgeous. Maybe we need to learn to love ourselves… be happy with a few extra pounds, a “C” in Geometry, and a family that is less than perfect. We are not perfect. We are not rich. We are not better than the people on the other side of the fence. But we can be happy with who we are and the fact that God loves them, too.