When you ask someone how he is these days, a cute seemingly harmless response is expected to follow. “Ok lang, Busy.” This response is not limited to corporate people. I have heard this response (or in a similar form) from housewives, students even people in our churches. If the person has time, he may even rant about what this “busyness” actually mean: meetings, taking the children to school, taking care of the house, studies, outreach programs, and a myriad of other activities that seem to set everything in one category: chore. It is as if, when we are not doing something, we cease to be important and worthwhile.
However, if we treat life as a chore, we end up tired, stressed, burdened, loaded, restless, confused, unhappy.
It is an irony because we believe that when we keep ourselves busy we are actually working for happiness. But happiness is an illusive word. The more we toil for it, the more it becomes unattainable.
Maybe now you’d like to ask: “How about my dreams, my ambitions, my goals?” Dreams, ambitions, goals are not bad, it is the MY that is keeping you away from it.
“If you remain in me and my words in you, then you will ask for anything you wish, and you shall have it.” John 15:7
Is it really that simple? Why then is it hard to remain in him?
It is because God’s ways are not our ways. In God, to have is to give, to win is to loose, to lead is to serve, to be forgiven is to forgive. What we seek to have for ourselves, we lose. If we do not give out happiness, we lose our happiness. If we do not give out love, we lose love.
“If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that your joy may be complete. My commandment is this, Love one another just as I have loved you.” John 15: 10-12
Lord, I do not always understand your ways but in your mercy embrace me with your understanding, envelope me in your wisdom and cuddle me in your joy.
Someone once said, your life’s purpose is not about you. I say, so is your happiness. So go on, make random acts of kindness, go about your mundane jobs with the excitement you’d have for a sport, look people in the eye as you walk your office hallway and the streets, visit a sick person, hug a friend, give more than you’d want to, get less than what you’d need, pray with someone, pray for someone as if your life depended on it, bring a friend to confession, sit down and listen to a stranger, stay home and rediscover your family. Happiness is not out there. You are happiness. Give yourself away.
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