What is happiness? We all look for happiness, but happiness is in our own actions, not in our possessions.
Happiness is about what we do every day. Happiness is not just about being a good person and doing nothing, but about doing good, doing the right thing, living to serve and help, and looking for opportunities to serve.
We need to do good things. The happiest people are those who give to others. Life is too short to be angry, sad or ungrateful.
The following quote expresses this point perfectly, written by Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of George Hinckley, 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
“I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor’s children.
“I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”
The purpose of life is not simply to be happy. It’s about being helpful, honorable and compassionate—also about contributing in some way to make the world a better place. It is to leave a legacy that shows you lived and lived well.
Whether taking care of a child, cultivating a garden or improving social conditions, true success lies in knowing that, thanks to your existence, at least one life has breathed calmer. That, indeed, is to have reached the essence of life.
Hugo E. Martinez is president/bishop of the Spanish Gavilan Branch in Gilroy of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. He is a member of the Interfaith Clergy Alliance of South County. Bishop Martinez can be reached at hu*********@***il.com.
