Perhaps this article is a very simplified reflection about happiness. By the way this title has nothing to do with the film released a decade ago In Search of Happiness based on the real story of Chris Gardner (although the story is very suggestive), directed by Gabriele Muccino and the first starring Will Smith and his son Jaden Smith performing both a magnificent interpretation. Nor is it exactly the search for happiness, the thesis of the professor of Harvard University Tal Ben-Shahar (known as the guru of happiness) today turned into a chair that dictates the course "Greater happiness" that, despite if elective, it attracts 1,400 students per semester. This chair is based on surveys and field studies on the characteristics and components that allow you to live happily. From Seneca himself inquiring about happiness and following the Dalai Lama with his work The Art of Happiness and some more recent ones such as The Journey to Happiness by Eduard Punset and The Glasses of Happiness by Rafael Santandreu and of course the list of prestigious authors and various publications about it to this day continues and is really endless.
From Seneca himself inquiring about happiness and following the Dalai Lama with his work The Art of Happiness and some more recent ones such as The Journey to Happiness by Eduard Punset and The Glasses of Happiness by Rafael Santandreu and of course the list of prestigious authors and various publications about it to this day continues and is really endless. Recently I was able to attend, together with other Christian leaders, a talk at the Universitat de Sociología de Barcelona to what has been called, the Chair of Happiness; and this research and study team curiously works analyzing the different causes and reasons of both happiness and unhappiness, related to the environment in which we live, as well as the reconciliation of work life with social and family life and other spatial and architectural aspects of our cities and homes. Of course it is also a matter of study the religious phenomenon with respect to the happiness of individuals and many other aspects collected in a global survey on values and aspirations of people in different parts of the world. But what most caught my attention is what at one time we would have thought a real silliness for many as nothing more and nothing less than a whole academic and university chair on happiness. This curious initiative is a clear demonstration of how times change. The noble desire to be happy and the incessant search for happiness is inserted in our alma mater because all of us in one way or another dream of a life and a better and more stable world that we hardly find in our days. I would say that practically all mortals spend their lives in search of personal happiness as if it were an endless pilgrimage in search of the coveted philosopher's stone of earthly happiness. The Bible itself reveals authentic paradoxes on the path of true happiness such as dying oneself to live a life of spiritual fullness, another biblical paradox of happiness is losing to win, it is about losing our pride and our personal ambitions to earn and enjoy a more Christ-centered life and more spiritual satisfaction. Another of the great paradoxes is to overcome evil with good, loving people with that strength of God's love that has been poured into our hearts, even loving our own enemies in exremis. Someone has said that love in action is the most sublime expression of happiness.
The Beatitudes that we read in the Gospel (Matthew 5: 3-12) have to do with divine principles as well as dynamic ones for personal happiness. For example "Blessed, happy and blessed (makarios) are the merciful because they will obtain mercy" (Matthew 5: 7). Here the law of reciprocity is fulfilled, if we are merciful to others, we too will enjoy the mercy of God and so many others towards us. Because mercy is more generous or always goes beyond what we could deserve. Another element of our unhappiness is the psychological and emotional tension that we often maintain between what we have and what we would like to have or obtain, but when we confidently accept contentment with what we have and learn to thank God for everything, a new synergy in the reproduction of our endorphins releasing great satisfaction in us and a great emotional as well as spiritual well-being.