The Etiquette of Happiness

Eric Stockhausen

Too often we forget gentle breeze and the light between shadows is missed. Why have we forgotten that love of nature? Why have we lost the gentle happiness of peace? Definitely you know, you have done something haven’t you?

You have watched the television recently. Do you notice something? They are telling you to buy something or that something is wrong! The sunlight is free and economies need to sell expensive things. Go inside all day and watch television. Go to the dark movie theatre, for this is what society has built.

We have forgotten how to make ourselves happy because we have become complacent to modern consumerism to make our happiness dependent on something. Is it God? Is it results? Is it watching our favorite television?

Well, you probably heard similar complaints before from other critics of the wretched state of our shopping madness. It is not stuff that is the problem, but the abandonment of wisdom. The wisdom of the gentle hand of happiness is my philosophy.

To smile when seeing another do likewise and to laugh with the children on the playground is an age old tradition. Remember other people’s happiness, for the emotion impact of others is important to you and the world. Remember not only to push for what is right but to make people happy also. This is a moral happiness.

Remember that contact with other people is a way of exchanging emotions and hopes. There are no enemies for those who share the dream of happiness with the whole of humanity. But there is fear, there is weakness. Only a fool would not be concern with the faults of society and the individual and the self. Understand fear without being corrupted by it. This is the Lotus which comes from the murky water and rises about it. This is life emotion transforming.

My favorite philosopher, Albert Camus once wrote that “A taste for Truth is but a passion that spares nothing.” Never become so obsessed with being in the right that you become an unjust judge. No one has the right to judge others unless they have been given that power. No one voice has the right to dominate the majority and, with human values in place, the majority will be restrained from a tyranny of its own making. One must learn to move the world with a gentle touch in the right direction. Peaceful protest and suffering unjust judges are the sacrifices the followers of gentle happiness take in the dark times.

It is wise never to drown oneself in any emotion to the detriment of reason and consciousness. One must be aware of their purely physical state. One can crush life so easily, and with that realization, become mature. Death is something to treat seriously. Death is a matter to not be completely happy about when unnecessary death occurs daily. But a funeral can be an occasion for happiness, for death cannot erase the fact that those who lived good lives existed.

Accepting these winds of life and death, darkness and light, and truth and emotion, one can roam reality with a gentle touch of happiness. The gadgets of any era may help provide abundance to many, but they do not replace traditional happiness. It is a future in which progress is in happiness and truth for which is most dreamt. Seek it, push it, and make it. It is all you and the fellow peace dreamers.