My wife recently watched Insight on the Australian Television channel SBS. The program was about happiness. It reflected on what made people happy. The transcripts can be found here. It is a fascinating look at a concept that has been described as a “flow”.
PROFESSOR BOB CUMMINS, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: We’ve been tracking the Australian population in terms of their happiness now for about five years. And one of the aspects of our measure – our measure is just seven questions that we ask people about their satisfaction with areas in their life – and the one that is most important is the one that dominated through all of those little kids’ accounts and that is connection to other people, our relationships. This seems to lie really at the heartland of our wellbeing. If we haven’t got that, then it’s very hard to achieve happiness through other means.
I would place happiness in the realm of spirituality. Because, it is not something that can really be achieved by ourselves. It always comes as an undeserved gift. And, as Bob says it has a lot to do with our connectedness and our satisfaction with those relationships. Further in the program they show that happiness has little to do with our external circumstances and give some very telling examples of people who have overcome major hurdles to discover happiness.
Technorati Tags : spirituality, community, relationships