The Radical Act of Happiness

I wrote last week about not complaining.  Let’s take that a little further.  What if, instead of simply not complaining, we went out of our way to try to be happy?  What if we made a specific effort to be cheerful and find joy in every day?

Now, I understand that there are some days this is not going to work.  No one can be cheerful and happy every day.  Also, there are sometimes real life situations that make being cheerful and happy an unnatural act.  If you’re sick, if you’ve just lost a loved one, if you or someone you care about has lost a job, those and many other situations are ones in which you are not going to be happy and cheerful.  In fact, if you were, people would start to question your grip on reality.

But I’m talking about the ordinary sorts of days, the ones we generally live in everyday life.  Those are days in which we can be happy and cheerful and joyful.  But for most of us, it’s not going to happen by itself.  We have to make a specific effort to feel those things.

Patch Adams once said that the most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy.  Why is that?  I think a major reason is that society discourages it.  Think about it.  When you turn on the news, do you ever see any people who are happy?  Very rarely.  The news, by its nature, is bad news.  Not only that, but every day on the news you see people who are upset and angry about something.  I’m not passing judgment on the validity of their anger.  The point is that those are the only people you ever see.  Happy people never make the news.

It’s the same on TV shows.  Very seldom do you see a character on a show who is happy and joyful about their life, and if you ever do they’re usually made fun of by the rest of the cast.  They’re treated like there’s something wrong with them. Society tells us that we should not be happy, that we should not feel joy in our lives.  Society tells us that we should either be angry or depressed or discouraged with our lot in life.

But you know what?  As Christians, we’re not supposed to do what society tells us.  We’re supposed to do what Jesus told us.  And Jesus told us to love people.  It’s pretty hard to love people if you’re angry or depressed or discouraged.  The only way we can truly love people is if we’re feeling happy ourselves.  So if we want to love people the way Jesus told us to, we need to make an effort to be happy ourselves.

So let’s do that.  How?  Well, I think a good first step is to think of all the things God has done for you.  There have been a lot of them.  Most of us have family members who love us.  Most of us have enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, and clothes to wear.  If nothing else, we all have the incredible gift of life and the incredible gift of love and salvation that God offers us through Jesus Christ.  Thinking of that should always give us something to be happy about.

So this week, don’t worry.  Be happy!  And have a great week!