Happiness
THE HAPPIEST OF PEOPLE DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE EVERYTHING
After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite having to
work 2 jobs that bring in approximately R2500 per month, he's quite happy.
I wondered how anyone could be happy considering he has to skimp with
everything because of his low pay.
He's supporting his parents, his in-laws, his wife, 2 daughters and the many bills his large household accrues.
He explained that his reasoning was caused by one incident that he'd seen in India.
It had happened a couple of years before he'd married when he was
feeling very low, after a major setback, while touring India.
He said that right in front of his very eyes, he saw an Indian mother chop
off her child's right hand.
The hopelessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old has haunted him, ever since.
You may ask why did the mother do so? Had the child been naughty?
Had the child's hand been infected? No, it was done for two simple words TO BEG!!!
The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that
the child could go out to the streets to beg.
Taken back by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating and almost instantly, a flock of 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread, covered with sand, robbing bits from one another.
How could hunger and desperation be allowed to fester like this?
Stricken by the happenings, he instructed his guide to get a truck and to
drive him to the nearest bakery.
He went to two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found.
The owners were dumbfounded but willingly sold everything.
He spent less than R200 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than R0.50 per loaf) and then spent about R100 to get other daily necessities.
Off he went with his bread into the streets.
As he distributed the bread and
necessities to the children and adults (mostly handicapped) he received cheers and bows.
For the first time in his life he wondered how people would do almost anything for a loaf of bread which cost less than 50 CENTS.
He began to tell himself how fortunate he was.
How fortunate he is to be able to have a complete body, have a job, have a family, have the chance to complain about what food is good and what isn't, have the chance to be clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived of.....
Now I began to think and feel it, too!
Was my life really that bad?
Perhaps... not, should I feel bad all the time?
What about you?
Maybe the next time you think it couldn't be worse, I think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.
"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it's the realization of how much you already have."
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the next that has been opened for us.
It's so very true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it.
But it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything.
They just make the most of everything that comes their way.
The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't be your best until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
~~author unknown~~
