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Happiness is like a telephone directory

How 'bout right here, right now, be happy. Tell yourself from now on, you've got no other option but be happy. And then forget about it, and just go with the flow. This is not complacency; this is simply channeling your energies to more worthwhile events. Instead of being overwhelmed with problems, try being excited about solving them.

Go with the flow, and everything, as they say, will fall into place. Sounds a lot like Zen and spirituality, you might say. Spirituality is a big thing nowadays, in this age of technologically-flavored chaos and confusion. Everyone's embracing it, everyone's incorporating spirituality into their lives. Because Spirituality is equals to Happiness?

Kindergarten Spirituality

Well, yes. Spirituality is equals to happiness. But really, how can we even begin being happy when we can't even grasp the magnitude of spirituality. For all we know, the secret to being happy is to merely go back being a child, see things with a childlike perspective.

Maybe we are not happy because we've simply forgotten or abandoned the kindergarten version of ourselves. The ones who were happy right here and now, and didn't think about it. The ones who weren't scared of possibilities, who didn't limit themselves, who seized the day, and laughed and danced and loved as if there was no tomorrow.

We we're a happy bunch when we were in kindergarten and we didn't need any spirituality at all. So how come we need spirituality now to be happy?

I am responsible, therefore I am.

It's because the world we're living in operates on a different reality now than when we were in kindergarten. Now, we are adults, largely defined by our duties and responsibilities. Add to these the vices, influences, and all sorts of distraction and corruption the world has thrown at us. We didn't need spirituality back in kindergarten because we still didn't have a sense of identity and responsibility. But now we do.

Spirituality is, of course, a weighty subject. We can delve into our past lives and realize how they influence the lifetime we're living now. Or how every bit of our smallest actions affects everyone and everything else in the planet, like a domino effect. Or discovering our purpose connects with a higher purpose. Spirituality is all that and more.

But for now, we'll simply define spirituality as taking a step back out of ourselves for a better view, and at the same time, going back into our very selves. It all starts with us, when we try to flip open that inner telephone book in us and have a real heart-to-heart talk with yourself.

We're too caught up with our responsibilities to the world that we lose touch with ourselves and our spirituality. We forget that we are both responsible for our own selves and have a responsibility to ourselves. Consequently, we are responsible for our own happiness.

Happy Birthday Everyday!

But here's the thing, just like when we were in kindergarten, we don't become happy by planning to be happy. Real happiness is effortless. If from the start we have our expectations and projections of it, then we have already shaped and restricted happiness into a set of parameters.

But if we are happy simply by meeting each of life's events as they come, if we meet them head-on, as consciously as we can, and savor them for the experience of constant rebirth it offers us, then we're happy, spiritually so. And we'd be so busy being happy, busy being ourselves, that we won't even realize it.