Is it possible to be happy?
A great many people wonder whether or not happiness even
exists in this modern, rushing world. Very often an
individual can have a million dollars, he can have everything
his heart apparently desires, and is still unhappy. We take
the case of somebody who has worked all his life; he has worked
hard and he has raised a big family. He has looked forward
to that time in his life when he, at last, can retire and
be happy and be cheerful and have lots of time to do all the
things he has wanted to do. And then we see him after he has
retiredand is he happy? No. He's sitting there thinking
about the good old days when he was working hard.
Our main problem in life is happiness, but I'll tell you
more in a moment. The world may or may not be designed to
be a happy one. It may or may not be possible for you to be
happy in this world, and yet nearly all of us have a goal
to be happy and cheerful about existence.
You know, very often we look around at the world around us
and say that nobody could be happy in this place. We look
at the dirty dishes in the sink and the car needing a coat
of paint and at the fact that we need a new gas heater, we
need a new coat, we need new shoes or we would just like to
have better shoes; and so, how could anyone possibly be happy
when actually he can't have everything he wants? He is unable
to do all the things he'd like to do, and therefore, this
environment doesn't permit a person to be as happy as he could
be. Well, I'll tell you a funny thinga lot of philosophers
have said this many, many timesbut the truth of the
matter is that all the happiness you ever find lies
in you.
You remember when you were maybe five years old, and you
went out in the morning and you looked at the day, and it
was a very, very beautiful day, and you looked at the flowers
and they were very beautiful flowers. Twenty-five years
later you get up in the morning, you take a look at the flowersthey
are wilted. The day isn't a happy day. Well, what has changed?
You know they are the same flowers, it's the same world, something
must have changed. Probably it was you.
Actually, a little child derives all of his pleasure in life
from the grace he puts upon life. He waves a magic hand and
brings all manner of interesting things into being out in
the society. Here is this big, strong brute of a man riding
his iron steed, up and down, and boy, he'd like to be a cop.
Yes sir! He would sure like to be a cop; and twenty-five years
later he looks at that cop riding up and down and checks his
speedometer and says, "Doggone these cops!"
Well, what is changed here? Has the cop changed? No. Just
the attitude toward him. One's attitude toward life makes
every possible difference in one's living. You know you don't
have to study a thousand ancient books to discover that fact.
But sometimes it needs to be pointed out again that life
doesn't change so much as you.
Once upon a time, perhaps, you were thinking of being married
and having a nice home and having a nice family; everything
would be just fine. The husband would come home and you would
put the dinner on the table and everybody would be happy about
the whole thing; and then you got married and maybe it didn't
quite work out. Somehow or other, he comes home late and he
has had an argument with the boss, and he doesn't feel well.
He doesn't want to go to the movies and he doesn't see how
you have any work to do anyhowafter all, you sit home
all day and do nothingand you know he doesn't do any
work either. He disappears out of the house. He's gone. Then
he comes back later in the evening and quite an argument could
ensue over this. Actually, both of you work quite hard. Well,
what do we do with a condition like this? Do we just break
up the marriage? Or touch a match to the whole house? Or throw
the kids in the garbage can? Or go home to Mother? Or what
do we do?
Well, there are many, many things we could do, and the least
of them is to take a look at the environment. You know, just
look around and say, "Where am I? What am I doing here?"
And then, once you have found out where you are, why, try
to find out how you can make that a little more habitable.
The day when you stop building your own environment, when
you stop building your own surroundings, when you stop waving
a magic hand and gracing everything around you with magic
and beauty, things cease to be magical, things cease to be
beautiful.
Other people seek happiness in various ways. They seek it
hectically, as though it's some sort of mechanism that exists.
Maybe it's a little machine, maybe it's parked in the cupboard,
maybe happiness is down at the next corner or maybe it's someplace
else. They're looking for something, but the odd part of it
is, the only time they ever find something is when they put
it there first. Now, this doesn't seem very creditable, but
it's quite true. Those people who have become unhappy about
life are unhappy about life solely and completely because
life has ceased to be made by them. Here we have the single
difference in a human being. We have here a human being who
is unhappy, miserable and isn't getting along in life, who
is sick, who doesn't see brightness. Life is handling, running,
changing, making him.
And here you have somebody who is happy, who is cheerful,
who is strong, who finds that there is something worth doing
in life, and what do we discover in this person? We find out
that he is making life, and there is actually a single difference:
Are you making life, or is life making you?
And when we go into this and we will find out that person
has stopped making life because he himself has decided that
life cannot be made. Some failure, some small failure, maybe
not graduating with the same class, or maybe that failure
that had to do with not marrying quite the first man or woman
that came along who seemed desirable, or maybe the failure
of having lost a car, or just some minor thing in life started
this attitude. A person looked around one day and said, "Well,
I've lost," and after that life makes him, he doesn't
make life anymore.
Now, this would be a very dreadful situation if nothing could
be done about it, but the fact of the matter is that it is
the easiest problem of all the problems man faces: changing
himself and changing the attitudes of those around him. It
is very, very easy to change somebody else's attitude. Yet,
you are totally dependent upon other people's attitudessomebody's
attitude toward you may make or break your life. Did it ever
occur to you that your home holds together probably because
of the attitude the other person has toward you? So there
are really two problems hereyou would have to change
two attitudes: (1) your attitude toward somebody else; and
(2) their attitude toward you. Well, are there ways to do
this? Yes, fortunately, there are.
For many, many centuries, man has desired to know how to
change the mind and condition of himself and his fellows.
Actually, man hadn't accumulated enough information do this
up to relatively few years ago. But we are making it a very
fast-paced world, we are making it a world where magic is
liable to occur at any time, and has.
Man now understands a great many things about the universe
he lives in, which he never understood before. Amongst the
things he now understands is the human mind. The human mind
is not an unsolved problem. Nineteenth-century psychology
didn't solve the problem, but that doesn't mean it has not
been solved.
In modern times, the most interesting miracles are taking
place all across this country and across other continents
of Earth. What do these miracles consist of? They consist
of people becoming well when they were ill, incurably ill.
They consist of people who were unhappy becoming happy once
more. They consist of abolishing the danger inherent in many
of the illnesses and many of the conditions of man. Yet the
answer has been with man all the time; man has been able to
reach out and find this answer, so perhaps man himself had
to change. Perhaps he had to come up to modern times to find
out that the physical universe was not composed of demons
and ghosts, to outlive his superstitions, to outlive the ignorance
of his forebears. Perhaps he had to do everything, including
inventing the atom bomb, before he could finally find himself.
Well, he has pretty well mastered the physical universe now.
The physical universe is, to him, rather a pawn; he can do
many things with it. And, having conquered that, he can now
conquer himself. The truth of the matter is he has
conquered himself. The religious philosophy of Scientology
came about because of a man's increased knowledge of energy.
Man became possessed of more information about energy than
he had had before in all of his history; and amongst that,
he came into possession of information about the energy which
is his own mind. The body is an energy mechanism. Naturally,
a person who cannot handle energy could not handle a body.
He would be tired, he would be upset, he would be unhappy,
and he looks all around him to find nothing but energy. If
he knew a great deal about energy, particularly the energy
of himself and the space which surrounds him, he, of course,
would know himself; and that, in the final essence, has been
his goal for many thousands of years. To know himself.
Scientology has made it possible for him to do so.
L. Ron Hubbard, from the book Scientology:
A New Slant on Life.
Scientology: A New Slant on Life is a collection of
thirty of L. Ron Hubbard's best-loved timeless articles. Some
originally appeared as magazine articles, while others are
from his lectures and early radio programs; every one is a
gem of wisdom and practical truth. Chapter titles include:
- Is It Possible to Be Happy? (Contained in this newsletter)
- The True Story of Scientology
- Man's Search for His Soul
- The ARC Triangle
- Two Rules for Happy Living
- What Is the Basic Mystery?
- Happiness and Interest
- The Dynamics of Existence
- How to Live with Children
- On Marriage
- The Anatomy of Failure
- Acceptance Level
- Confronting
- On Bringing Order
- Professionalism
- On Human Character
- Past, Present and Future
- Playing the Game
- The Vocabularies of Science
- How to Study a Science
- Records of the Mind Are Permanent
- The Race Against Man's Savage Instincts
- The Third Party Law
- Justice
- What Is Knowledge?
- Man from Mud
- The Psychiatrist at Work
- Honest People Have Rights, Too
- You Can Be Right
- What Is Greatness?