Starting Caring Valley

For many years, I’ve been pondering ways to help everyone lead happier lives. Since happiness is a mental state, the answer had to be be that happy people either did not have worries or, deeply believed that they did not need to worry.

If they didn’t have worries, then it had to mean that all their human necessities were taken care of.

If they believed that they did not need to worry, then it had to mean they had faith in a a higher power.

It all came down to understanding that happiness is relative to where you are in life. It’s less about wealth and more about health, mental well-being and faith. And perhaps the main two causes of unhappiness are poor health and lack of meaningful relationships. I realized that, for most of us, the biggest contirbution to our own happiness is from other people both positively and negatively. And secondly, even if we have good family and friends, our health tops everything else.

We know this, yet …

So it is odd that while health and other people have the most impact on us, they are also the two that we most often take for granted. Maybe we are programmed to ignore what we inherently know is good for us in favor of gaining more of the social currency. It appears that our socical currency today is measured in terms of wealth and power over others. For example, it just takes a small flu infection to throw us completely off our game and change our priorities during the time we are sick. But as soon as we are well, we forget about the sickness and the people that helped us get through it - we revert back to competing for more social currency. If so, the only way the happiness factor can increase for all is if our social currency is measured in terms of health and gratitude.

I am not sure if I can change that, but what I can do is to make a few people happier today.

–Joel