Reflection: personal philosophy of happiness

Everyone has a personal philosophy of happiness. It is hard to say whether our personal philosophy of happiness brings happiness.

Sometimes the personal philosophy of happiness changes so rapidly that we have to redefine our personal philosophy of happiness.

When we were young, our personal philosophy of happiness was quite simple. At those times, things were much simpler, our personal philosophy of happiness was: play to make ourselves happy, eat ice-cream and chocolate to make ourselves happy, sleep as late at night as possible, and hope we overslept so that we could miss school. That was a very simple philosophy of happiness.

When we were a bit older, but still in primary school, our personal philosophy of happiness included scoring well in examination to make our parents happy. At those days, religion had no influence for determining our philosophy of happiness. We followed what our parents did.

As we reached the teens, our personal philosophy of happiness changed. Acceptance by friends became more important to us than making our parents happy. Rebellious spirit becomes our personal philosophy of happiness. Our friends seemed to admire us for standing up to our parents, rather than listening to our parents.

Personal philosophy of happiness kept on changing. In school days, we tended to think that money does not bring happiness, and our personal philosophy of happiness reflects that attitude. Money does not mean a lot to us yet, since we are not spending our hard earned money.

The moment we entered society, and started to make money, money becomes a prominent part of happiness. Our personal philosophy of happiness includes money. We had the misconception that working hard, and making more money is the key to happiness.

This philosophy of happiness is subjected to change. The change can come in the form of meeting our real love or the death of someone we love. At that moment, we realized that money cannot and should not be the key component in our philosophy of happiness. While money is still important, we can see that money cannot buy the real love, and money cannot buy the life for our dead loved ones.

For some of us, we got religious at certain part of our lives, and that has a great impact on our philosophy of happiness. Many people who are deeply religious adopt the teachings of the religion as the philosophy of happiness.

Happiness is not something concrete. Happiness is an inner feeling. Nobody can be happy every single minute. And happiness is very elusive, sometimes the more we seek happiness, the more we are unhappy.

Whatever it is, our personal philosophy of happiness will affect our words and actions. When our philosophy of happiness tells us that money is the most important thing in life, we will spend our time and energy making more money.

When the result proves us wrong, we will change the personal philosophy of happiness.