Are We Happy, Really?

Are we getting just old enough (and on so many medications)
That we don't realize how down right irritable we can be?
Or, have we not realized just how unhappy we really are?

Upon first entering the workforce, I was in shock, and sometimes thoroughly angered, to discover the authoritarian, legalistic, generation of adults who (had controlled our every thought and being) didn't even have their own act together!

Only then, these adults were deacons, Sunday School teachers, and the like ... with a different code of ethics in the workplace. Evidently, all that lust and greed wasn’t the answer, because they still aren't truly happy.

Now, my youngest is 19, with her first experience in the workforce, and she thoroughly loathes her job ... not because of employers or even co-workers, but the customers. It isn't just an occasional cranky old biddy. As she says, "Mom, it's all of them!"

Customers make the same purchases, over and over, with the same gripes. She's in the food business. So, there is pre-knowledge that food will taste the same, be wrapped the same way, customers will be charged the same ... every time. My daughter questions, "If they really don't like our product, why don't they go somewhere else?"

Evidently, customers do like the product, as this store is a multi-million dollar business. Though, multitudes do appear unhappy, as retailers well know. Maybe we can keep it all neatly tucked, take it out on clerks and waitresses, none the wiser. Now, that's a plan!

Why don't we just admit it? "I am not happy. My life sucks! There isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There is no outside source or circumstance that will bring long term happiness." (Happiness is not a position, situation, or standing that we or anyone else can create. It comes from within.)

Maybe, then, we would face the truth. Our methods don't work. Not even religion brings lasting happiness. Only God can bring the kind of peace that passes all circumstances. And, to find it, perhaps we could begin considering He really does have the answers!

© 2003 by Joyce C. Lock

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:6-8

http://my.homewithgod.com/blessingsandlessons/
http://www.aspecialplace.net/ChristianityMadeSimple/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeavenlyInspirations-originalwritings/
http://our.homewithgod.com/heavenlyinspirations/heavenlyinspirations-intro.htm
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