Is It Possible to Be Happy? By L. Ron Hubbard
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 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 "how"
of life from the grave 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 man riding his iron steed, up and down, and boy, he'd like to
be a copy. 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, "Dog-gone
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 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 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 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 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 sound very plausible, 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 most things are pleasurable, and who
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?
Carefully go into this and you 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 critical situation
if nothing could be done about it, but the fact of the matter is that it is the
easiest problem of all 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 attitudes-somebody's attitude
toward you may make or break your life. Did it ever occur to you that your home
holds together because of the attitude the other person has toward you? So there
are really two problems here-you 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 had an accumulative inclination to 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 no 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, no longer a problem; 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 to 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.
Click
here to order your copy of Scientology: A New Slant on Life or to
get more information on the book.
|