Creating a Happy Life
Since ancient days, Eastern wisdom traditions have taught several ways toward a good life. Old texts describe five things that shape how a life unfolds: our given temperament, the seasons of circumstance we pass through, our surroundings, learning, and good deeds.
To unpack them a little: our given temperament is the part of us that doesn’t change — the raw material we start with. Circumstance is the part that keeps shifting, rising and falling through a life, and the skill is in noticing it coming and going so you can act at the right place and the right time. Our surroundings shape us the way soil and light shape a plant. And the last two, learning and good deeds, might seem beside the point at first — as if they belonged to a different conversation about how to live well.
The practice I come from works mostly with the first two — temperament and circumstance. By paying close attention to when someone was born and the pattern that comes with it, it’s possible to say something true about a person’s given nature, and how that nature is likely to meet the seasons ahead of it. Much of this rests on something we can’t change — you can’t rewrite the raw material you were given at birth.
Our surroundings work differently, because they’re something we can actually choose, rearrange, and shape to fit our situation. That’s part of why the idea of shaping your environment has fascinated people the world over — it offers something proactive to do. Arrange the space you live and work in with intention, and you can support the kind of energy that leads toward a settled, successful life.
But the real lesson underneath these five teachings isn’t the one most people take away first. The essence actually sits in the last two — learning and good deeds. The old texts go so far as to say that only someone who treats others with mercy and lives with real virtue is able to understand their surroundings well enough to find a good place to stand.
Many people turn to these old ways of reading a life in their hardest moments, or when they’re hoping for something better. But desperation on its own never fixes anything. The old teachers said that anything good only ever comes to someone who does good and puts in real effort — not to someone who simply waits for it.
Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others build everything themselves from nothing. Either way, success rarely comes easily, and it can slip away far faster than it arrived. Don’t cling too tightly to wealth and fame — they can vanish as quickly as an overnight dream. There’s an old saying that wealth rarely survives three generations. It is far harder to hold on to it than it was to earn it.
Good deeds do not have to be a great charity which involves sharing your property. It pertains primarily to your daily practices, posture, tone, manner of speaking and the words you choose.
We know there are quite a few cases of corruptions, inappropriate conducts, and absurd behavior. Many recent social issues, such as the Korean Air “nut rage” incident and the abusing children at daycare centers, have aroused public rage. Public rebuke and legal pressure have crashed upon those involved. The collapse of their comfortable lives provides us a lesson of how to live.
How people pose, their facial expressions and the verbal messages they try to deliver have lots of implications about whether they can cultivate a contented life or not. Pay attention to what you think, your routine and repetitive behaviors. We must understand the fame and success have to be accompanied by “noblesse oblige”. Goodness is a fundamental asset to lead a happy life.