“Being wise and good, they have pleasure in these things. If they are not wise and good, though they have these things, they do not find pleasure.” – Mencius
Being wise and good is a wonderful gift from above. It is a great opportunity for the individual to be a good leader in the community. In fact, it is the ideal characteristic of a true leader. To be good and wise makes the individual to do so many things not only for his own sake, but of others as well. To be good and wise can make the individual different from the others. A wise and good man views life in a different manner on the way other people perceive it. When others see darkness, he saw light. When others consider failure as the end of everything, he considers it as the beginning of a new thing. When others consider life as misery, he finds it something to enjoy and cherish. A wise and good man look at life and its happenings differently than the way others will think about it. That’s the reason why a wise and a good person can truly attain the gift of happiness in life.
To be happy is not an option, but rather it is a choice. For a wise and good person, happiness doesn’t lie alone in material things. In fact, material things can’t give us everlasting joy. Material things are just finite, it has its own limitation. Material things can give us joy at the first hand, but as time goes by it will also fade and can be snatched away from us. A child who needs a tender love and care from his parents can never be happy even if he will be given 10 billion pesos. A widow can never be happy even she receives millions of money form the insurance of his husband. A millionaire can never be happy if he didn’t win the true love of her wife. To have so many properties or money can’t assure as to have a complete or a happy kind of life. To have a higher kind of position in the society will not merit us to have a good and happy kind of life. To be a president of our country can never assure us that we can attain everlasting happiness in life, but instead will even give us burden because of the mediocrity of the stupid people in our country. So it is not happiness but a problem! Material things can never promise us heaven or happiness but most of the time it gives us so many problems and worries that makes us to suffer. I’m not saying here that having enough money or properties will make you unhappy, but what I mean is: we can never be happy if we don’t know how to spend our money or properties for what is good and just.
Happiness can’t be only found in great things or in our higher positions. Happiness can even be found in just small and simple things. A simple dinner and conversation with our love ones will already make us happy. A simple “hello” from our crush will already burst our heart from the happiness it felt. A simple affirmation from our teachers will make us already happy and inspired to learn more about the facts of life. Even a simple answered prayer could already make our day complete. Forgiveness from the person we have sinned could already lighten the burden that we bear inside us.
A true wise and good man knows that there is no need for him to seek things beyond his capacity just to find happiness for himself. A true wise and good man knows how to make himself happy even just in his very simple ways. A true wise and good man knows that his happiness lies on the good things that he is doing, because he knows that material things will be nothing (can make you happy) if he doesn’t know how to use them properly. A true wise and good man knows that true happiness can be also found in doing good things which makes you also feel happy. We can never be happy if we don’t find happiness in whatever we are doing.
What Mencius is trying to say is that, happiness is not an option, but rather it is a choice. We can never be happy with the material things that we have in life. We can only be happy if we try to do good things out of these material things that we have in us – to share the gifts that we have in our less fortunate brothers and sisters, because material things will be useless if we don’t know how to use them wisely. We can only be happy if what we are doing is good and if we become also concerned about the welfare of the others.
RSS Feed