Happiness is not fleeting pleasure, not even the most ecstatic and overwhelming joy, but a state and lasting feeling of deep satisfaction and fulfilment, which comes from within and does not depend on something that may or may not happen, that can be won or lost or increase and decrease. The deepest happiness expresses the fullness of being and accompanies the global flowering of all our cognitive and affective faculties, the unlimited understanding and love of the world and all forms of life. The deepest happiness integrates and surpasses, without ignoring them, the experiences of pain, suffering and conflict, as it transcends the restlessness and anxiety still inherent in the desire and search to be happy.

The deepest happiness is a feeling of fulfilment and realization of the meaning of life, a sense of integrity and perfection, although still significant the growth horizon that opens before us, an experience of not failing the target and passing along with our one and most authentic vocation: precisely that of being happy. It is suggestive that “sin” is the Latin translation of the Greek “amartia”, which means “to fail the target.” To be happy is to feel that the journey of life hits its deep target: the fullness, which many traditions describe as salvation, union with God, awakening, enlightenment or liberation.

The deepest happiness is a serene bliss beyond words.

In it we are not alone because in it all beings and things commune. The deepest happiness is simultaneously the most intimate and cosmic of events, the splendour of every consciousness and the whole universe, the powerful, wide and serene Feast of Life. To which we are all ever since and at every moment invited.

Author: Paulo Borges. Copyrights iLIDH 2015-