Hunting Happiness

There are a lot of nasty circumstances in life that are simply unchangeable. When sickness creeps in and turns out to be a incurable disease; when, despite all the careful attention in the world, a cutback takes it's prize. Other things too --like death. Some things are beyond our control. If this is our doom, why worry about it? We cannot control it, then why not roll with it?

Sometimes the only thing that we can control is how we react to the circumstance. It is what emotion we choose to assume. The victory is won by how well we can get up after falling down, or how to be grateful and happy in the most grotesque of situations. Viktor Frankl , lived in a concentration camp during the Nazi occupation, developed this thought while he was in those dire circumstances. He delivers the gem in the book he wrote called "A Man's Search for Meaning." 

Viktor describes the lives lived in the camps. He saw in them, their mental states. The Disparaged would walk the streets with sunk bodies, knowing that their purpose was to die. The Optimistic didn't look any different in clothes or the burden they bore, but they had a purpose! They were the ones that were able to be happy in such fiendish conditions. 

It's hard to imagine what it would have been like to be there, just as it would be difficult to imagine The Sacking of Rome, or The Bloody Revolution; many good people caught in a snare of circumstances that logic nor emotion can explain the causes of. Why did these things happen? they were all so avoidable. Such darkness. Yet despite the midnight hour, some had a flicker of light within. 

How do you do that? Find your purpose. don't take a facotry packaged one from someone else. Find a'one that is yours. Find something that will wake you up everyday because you have hay to haul. Who needs you to live? Who is depending on you? What mission does God yet have for you to accomplish here? What really is happiness? Answer these, I think, and you will find, meaning.