14 steps to happiness
A recipe and a prayer
Socrates believed the aim of every human deed was happiness. Every single one, philosopher, artist, poet, beggar, tried to say, to give, to find their way to be happy, teaching it to others and sharing it with others.
However, more than a genuine definition of happiness, what you need is a path, a definitive one, leading to the hoped outcome. Since, in this temporary journey, we call life, in this string of moment -that maybe we are learning to seize- there is just one question, continuing to spin the mind: How can I be happy? Even when the word “happiness” is replaced with “satisfaction” (so that, I can turn down the shooting and ask: How can I be satisfied?).
The keystone of our being, of our living, is feeling that what we are living is meaningful. Happiness is the dress of this meaning.
Above all, today, considering how corona virus has naked our fleeting abilities to control and contain everything.
Already Lorenzo the Magnificient got an inkling while ha was chanting “How beautiful is youth, that is just escaping from us, who wants to be happy is, of tomorrow there is not certainty” And long before Lorenzo, Marco Valerio Catullo did it when encouraged his lover, Lesbia, to live and give each other a thousand kisses. Yes, living, being happy. Something wondrous, right?
Over my pilgrimage searching for a sense, I thought to prepare a list aiming at something big: a recipe for being happy.
The list is open to anybody who wants to add a new angle -deeper or lighter- to make the road smoother and clearer.
- Appreciate what you have.
- Accept what happens.
- Trust your inner voice, you can name it also insight. It is that kind of electrocution whispering you a truth on yourself, spelling you the answers you needed only when it is necessary. Insights are sudden and not predictable, just listen to yourself, truly.
- Face your fear.
- Eat chocolate without feeling guilty.
- Swagger. Cultivate that awareness of loving yourself even when you wake up “like that”.
- Palpitate. Fret. Bluster.
- Once you understood your ancestral blockage, focus your energy just to go forward. All the wonder of life takes place on another day that begins.
- Forgive and forgive yourself (dare to do it).
- Do a journey inside yourself before you marry, or when someone dies, or when you become a mother, or do it now.
- Learn to understand you are the silent witness of your change, of your achievements, of the exhaustion and solitude this implies; after you can just radiate the benefits outside, but before there is only you under the burning sun and the pouring rain.
- Smile.
- Remember you can always heal.
- Make choices that make you grow up.
Flannery O’Connor, the writer, would like to add this prayer:
“Help me achieve something more than natural in my job. Help me, through this, to love and stand my job. Dear God, If I have to struggle for this let it be at your service. I’d like to be a saint in a cleaver way”.
