Dictionaries often define the word ‘happy’ as ‘lucky’ or ‘fortunate’. But there’s another definition that describes it as ‘the capacity for enjoyment.’ I like that because I’ve long believed that it’s not how much we have that makes us happy, but how much we’ve learned to enjoy what we have. Similarly, happiness – or the lack of it – is not about what happens to us, but rather about how we perceive what happens happens to us. It’s the knack of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback not as a disaster but as a challenge. It’s not about bemoaning what we don’t have, but enjoying what we do.
As the Bible says: ‘There are those who are rich even though they have nothing, and there are those who are poor even though they have great riches.’It’s all about our capacity for enjoying what we have.