Essence of happiness

还记得崔健的《一块红布》吗？一块红布蒙住了双眼，也蒙住了天，我问你看见了什么？你说看见了幸福。

美国著名杂志Reader's Digest 上一篇文章谈到“幸福，现将其中的“幸福片断节选如下：

幸福，攥在你的手心里。
The notion that we have to work at happiness comes as news to many people. We assume it's a feeling that comes as a result of good things that just happen to us, things over which we have little or no control. But the opposite is true: happiness is largely under our control. It is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be waited.

幸福不是万事如意。幸福需要一颗感恩的心，感谢生活，感谢每一束阳光。
Most of us compare ourselves with anyone we think is happier--a relative, an acquaintance or, often, someone we barely know, I once met a young man who struck me as particularly successful and happy. He spoke of his love for his beautiful wife and their daughters, and of his joy at being a radio talk-show host in a city he loved. I remember thinking that he was one of those lucky few for whom everything goes effortlessly right. Then we started talking about the Internet. He blessed its existence, he told me, because he could look up information on multiple sclerosis, the terrible disease afflicting his wife, I felt like a fool for assuming nothing unhappy existed in his life.

“人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺。有时，遗憾也是生活中的一种美。
Almost all of us have images of how life should be. The problem, of course, is that only rarely do people's jobs, spouses, and children live up to these imagined ideals. Here's a personal example: No one in my family had ever divorced. I assumed that marriage was for life. So when my wife and I divorced after five years of marriage and three years after the birth of our son, my world caved in. I was a failure in my own eyes.

I later remarried but confided to my wife, Fran, that I could not shake the feeling that my family life had failed. She asked me what was wrong with our family now. I had to admit that, our family life was wonderful. "Then why don't you celebrate it?" she asked. That is what I decided to do. But first I had to get rid of the image of a "perfect" family.

幸福的人看到的总是已有的那半桶水。
One effective way of sabotaging happiness is to look at something and fixate on even the smallest flaw. It's like looking up at a tiled ceiling and concentrating on the space where one tile is missing. As a bald man told me, "Whenever I enter a room, all I see is hair." Once you've determined what your missing tile is, explore whether acquiring it will really make you happy. Then do one of three things: get it, replace it with a different tile, or forget about it and focus on the tiles in your life that are not missing.

幸福与贫富无关。
I have spent years studying happiness, and one of the most significant conclusion I've drawn is this; there is little correlation between the circumstance of people's lives and how happy they are, A moment's reflection should make this obvious. We all know people who have had a relatively easy life yet are essentially unhappy. And we know people who have suffered a great deal but generally remain happy.