PATH TO HAPPINESS

     melchi5801@gmail.com                             
            THE QUEST FOR HAPPINESS
      The youthful days of people are usually one not devoid of experiences. experiences which could be abysmal, hilarious, interesting and so on. This expresses why our experiences vary and are different, why some youths face some kind of challenges and others do not. Having a reminiscence of my own past experiences both in primary and secondary school, I see clearly my own flaws and wished they could be corrected, but I understand them better as my mistakes have taught me and shaped me into a better person.
                                                  
       Many youths hide in the crowd and end up not discovering who they really are or the purpose they have to accomplish in this life, hence some just exist while others live. Back then, I would say 'I like this girl,' and in the next few months, I would like another girl, I would relax my hair in order to look good, I would wear the latest hairstyles, I would do push ups to look fit for my own woman, I would starve myself to buy airtime and subscribe to chat in "2go," I would slim fit my shirts and trousers to pencil mouth, I would save to buy the shoe, shirts and trousers in vogue, I would tell lies to attend birthday parties, visit a female friend, amongst many other things I did. But, where did all these acts take me to? No where, I was always back to square one. I just did them because I wanted to feel among.
       The wrong notion of feeling among needs to be erased of the minds of contemporary youths, since this causes an identity crisis and hinders our potentialities and misplaces our priority in life. More to all of these, was that I just wanted something, something I did not know what it was, or how it looked like, or felt; Indeed I wanted happiness.                    This explains my quest for things, my desire to want more, my search for the true happiness which I took for the wrong happiness.
In this contemporary time, many of us have substituted happiness for pleasure, for momentary and transient things. That is why the idea of individualism continues to grow stronger, we seek our own personal happiness which really is not happiness because happiness itself is something affective. There is this feeling and satisfaction you get when you do your work well, when you help lift a burden from someone, when you love genuinely, when we give our time, talent to the good of another, this brings about true happiness.
                                            
       At this juncture, it is pertinent to say that the insight shared is from Matthew Kelly's book "Resisting Happiness," and he established the fact that when we fail to do that which is right, that which brings true happiness, we resist happiness, one way it the other we fall short of this fact. For we Christians God is happiness himself, God is the essence of happiness, he is the quintessential of happiness and that is why it is only when we do things that give glory and praise to Him can we find true happiness.
                                                                                                       While working at a pharmacy; a wholesale outlet to be precise, I tried my best to do my work well and sincerely I felt happy that even when I got admission to a higher institution, I felt like not leaving the job. But, I had to leave and focus on my future; I had to move on. This life to me is a game, you either lose or win. In order to win, we must make sacrifices to be happy, we have to work hard, have positive thoughts, touch lives positively, doing your work well, contributing your own quota to the growth of the world no matter how difficulty things may be, finding time to pray, meditating on the scriptures, amongst many other good things you should do. However, when we resist happiness, we resist God. Thus, in our quest for happiness, we can only find it when we surrender completely to God.