The choice to be happy or unhappy every day in our life is in our hands. It depends on how we exercise this choice. Every day of our life, we have choices to make and this determines if we are happy or otherwise. Every situation in life has two sides. It is like looking at the glass half empty or half full. If we look at life as a half full glass, it makes us happy every day. On the other hand, if we keep worrying about the half empty glass, then life is treacherous leave alone being unhappy.

How do we be happy at all times ? It may not be practical to be happy at all times of your life. But the day we realise that we have a choice in everything we do every day, we may live happily. If we succeed in any effort, we are bound to feel good. On the other hand failure of any type makes us sad. When we fail, we have a choice to sob or reflect and learn from our mistakes.

It is like after running 40 kilometres if we are not able to complete a full marathon of 42 kilometres, we have a choice to curse ourselves for not completing the last two kilometres or pat ourselves on the back for completing 40 kilometres successfully and preparing earnestly for the next marathon to be a winner. So, in every situation we can regret and feel sad or rejoice whatever we could achieve and resolve to attain higher goals in the future.

Life is no different. Every day, God gives us the ability to make a choice. We can get up in the morning and be grateful for all the wonderful things he has blessed us with. On the other hand, we also have the option to curse ourselves and feel bad as we are not as wealthy as our neighbours or our siblings. In every situation, the choice we make, makes us happy or unhappy.

Happiness in my view is a state of mind. It is an attitude to life. I have met people who earn just enough to meet their daily needs every day but are always happy and willing to help others in all ways they can. On the other hand, I have met senior managers in organisations who earn enough for their next birth too but are never happy with their salary or quality of life. The day we realise that we can buy material things through money but can never buy happiness from any shop, we may have changed our attitude to life.

I am a born optimist and luckily for me my spouse is equally a contended person. We have been happily married for more than three decades and have gone through all the ups and downs of life. We have been happy when our monthly salary was just enough to meet both our ends or today when we are blessed with enough for our future. We realised as in the photo above that living life as if tomorrow does not exist is one key to happiness. Another mutual learning is to ensure that our greed never exceeds our need. Our third mantra to happiness has been to live within our means. We have never lived on credit and have always tried to be be debt free throughout our life( except for house, car or medical emergency loans taken at some stages of life)

So, we have a choice to make. The date and time to make the choice is every day and every minute. If we wait for the auspicious day to be happy, it may never arrive. It is better to live every day as if today has been the best in your life. If something goes wrong, it is better to hope that tomorrow will be a better day rather than brooding over yesterday and spoiling our future.

Let us start now. Be happy forever.

S Ramesh Shankar