Happiness
and
the True Values of Life
Do you sometimes feel that life doesn´t go the way you have
expected? Everything goes wrong, and you do not feel happy.
Everything has been vain... Have you ever thought about what
happiness is and what actually makes you happy?
For thousand of years people have been discussing hapiness and
the meaning of life. Does happiness depend upon one´s age,
income, education, gender or marital status? We don´t know if welloff people feel more satisfied than poor ones, or if good and
successful students are happier than their less prosperous mates.
There are some statistics about happy nations. Unfortunately, we
do not belong among the happiest nations. Why is that? We should
be aware that we live in a happier part of the world. We live in
freedom and enjoy peace and relative prosperity. We have water
we can drink, daily bread and a place to sleep. We live in
a moderate climate, and our country does not suffer from
devastating hurricanes, earthquakes or droughts. We have
mountains, forests, fertile soil and rivers. We have everything many
people in the world just dream about, and still there are more than
85 nations happier than we are. The problem is that we probably
do not see quite clearly what is really important in our lives and
what the key values are. It is sometimes hard to figure these out.
This is a very nice and clever story which might show us the right
way to look at things.
A professor of philosophy came to a classroom bringing a jar, two
cups of coffee and boxes with some other items. He didn´t say
anything, he just put the jar on the desk and started inserting tennis
balls in it up to its throat. When no more tennis balls could fit in it, he
asked the students: „Is this jar full?“ and they answered: „Yes, it is.“
Then he took out a box of pebbles and started filling the jar with
them. The pebbles filled the gaps among the tennis balls up to the
top of the jar. Then he asked the students again if the jar was full.
They said it was. After that he took another box and started pouring
sand into the jar. The sand filled in the tiny gaps left among the
pebbles. The sudents were similing, and when he asked if the jar was
full, they replied in a chorus: „Yes!“ Finally, he took those two cups of
coffee and poured them into the jar. The students were similing.
„Imagine this jar is your life,“ the profesor said. „The tennis balls
represent the most important things in your life, such as your family,
children, health or friends. Even if you do not have anything else, if
you have these, you can be satisfied with your life. The pebbles stand
for the less important things in your life, for example, your work,
home or car. The sand, in this case, means small, trivial things which
might be nice to have, but have no real importance for your life.
However, if you first put the sand into the jar, there will be no place
for the pebbles and, most importantly, for the tennis balls. To find
happiness we should know which things are essential in our life and
should not waste our energy and time on the petty ones.“ After that
one student asked the profesor:“ Excuse me, teacher, what do those
two cups of coffee mean?“ The profesor had expected this question
and said: „ No matter how good and full your life is, there should
always be a time and place to drink a cup of coffee with your friends
and loved ones.“
We should be able to sort out the most important and trivial
things and put our values in the right order. We should be able to
tell a tennis ball apart from a pebble and remember that we can
forget about the sand...
However, we cannot passively wait for happiness. It will not come
by itself. It will not be brought to us. We have to strive for
happiness through a greater commitment to activities, experiences
and being with people who share the same values. We are the ones
who can fill our life with happiness, we are the ones who have to
distinguish the tennis balls and pebbles from the sand.
Adopted from the magazine Friendship