Happiness

Just  came across this uplifting "Happiness Message" to send to my son serving an LDS Mission for our church.  My goal is to send a Missionary Message weekly, so that he gets a letter each week in the mail.  It is so easy to email our correspondence.  But, something different for him to look forward to each week.

Happiness

“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God” (Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5:134-35).

In this beautiful statement, the Prophet says not only that happiness is the objective in life, but he also explains how to go after it.  Lehi in writing to Jacob said, “Men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2;25).  Later in the same chapter, Lehi said, “The devil…seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself” (2 Nephi 2:27).  The purpose of man, therefore, is happiness.  God wants you to be happy; conversely, Satan wants you to be unhappy.

President David O. McKay said, “There are three means of achieving the happy, abundant life:  first, making God the center of one’s life; second, using the free agency given to man; and third, rendering service to others.”  Each of these three means is related to the path outlined by Joseph Smith:

1.      Make God the center of your life.  Joseph Smith said that you must keep the commandments of God, that you must be holy, and that you must be faithful.  Richard Wagner said, “joy is not in things, it is in us.”  The Savior said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).  He also said, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25).

2.      Use the moral agency given to you.  Happiness consists in mastering evil tendencies.  There cannot be happiness without the freedom to choose.  If the spirit of man is in bondage or enslaved, there cannot be true progress.  You must find a way for your spiritual self to control our physical self.  Sir James Barrie said, “The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes to do but in liking what one has to do.”  Joseph Smith said that you must have virtue and uprightness. Horace Mann said, “In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to principle.  He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors”  (in Horace Mann; His Ideas and Ideals, comp.  Joy Elmer Morgan [Washington, D.C.; National Home Library Foundation, 1936], 149; as cited in Marvin J. Ashton, “Be of Good Cheer,”  Ensign, May 1986, 66).

3.      Render service to others.  Happiness only comes to those who try to make others happy.  Robert Ingersoll said, “Happiness is the only good.  The place to be happy is here.  The time to be happy is now.  The way to be happy is to help make others so.”  Gretta Palmer said, “Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.”

The great German philosopher of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant, said that the great aims in life must be the perfecting of yourself and the happiness of others.  “Service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy in the hearts of our fellow men” (in Eldred G. Smith, Conference Report, April 1967, 77). President David O. McKay said, “He who seeks for happiness alone seldom finds it, but he who lives to give happiness to others finds that a double portion has come to himself” (David O. McKay, Pathways to Happiness, comp.  Llewelyn R. McKay [Salt Lake City; Bookcraft, 1957], 188).

Happiness is not an external condition.  It is a state of the spirit and an attitude of the mind. (Raymond E. Beckham, How to Help Your Missionary, 150).

Happiness is not an external condition.  It is a state of the spirit and an attitude of the mind. 

This message was taken from the great book,How to Help Your Missionary, pg 149-150  

by  Raymond E. Beckham,