There are three people who make me smile every day when I see them. They are not my friends, and I don’t actually know them. I bump into them at work, at home, and in market, but they don’t have a clue of how valuable their presence is. They just taught me a lot and they don’t know anything about it.
Our School Cleaner
Every day, I would see our school cleaner doing her job. She’s mopping floors and scrubbing here and there. We would greet each other when she comes to our office and when I see her I just see a woman who’s very happy in her job. She would have this big smile every day. Sometimes I wonder how she can smile when her task of making everything clean, for me, is so hard. But every single day, she would say good morning and make the surroundings sparkly. She cleans well. The previous cleaner in our building was a sad lady. But our current cleaner? She is a wonderful person to see very day. She does her job well, and she is happy.
The Egg Vendor
On Mondays, I pass by a woman selling different kinds of eggs. She can speak a little bit of English and whenever I buy eggs from her, she smiles in joy. One time, my money was one thousand and she doesn’t have change for it so she ran somewhere to get the change. In my previous experiences, vendors would often get angry when you give them a large cash and they don’t have change. But with this lady, she was even smiling as she was running to look for change. Every week, I would buy from her just because her happiness is viral. She even gives me one extra egg because I’m a loyal customer. She radiates.
Our Condo’s Security Guard
We have three security guards in rotation in our place. Our favorite guard is the one who always smiles and opens the door when we’re taking a long time to get the key card. He is happy every time we see him. My roommates and I would sometimes give him food because he is just such a nice person. I never see him sleep while on duty and I don’t know there’s just something about him that’s extra shiny.
So what’s the lesson I’ve learned from them?
We don’t need much to be happy.
Happiness is a choice. As long as we do everything with love, we can be happy. I used to think that I’ll be happy if I am rich, if I have nice clothes and a lot of money. Well, if you have a lot of material stuff, it will definitely make you more comfortable in this world. But comfort is not always associated with happiness. You may have everything you want, but still be miserable.
I saw in those three wonderful people that happiness is a decision. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you should be complacent and be okay with less. What I’m trying to say is, yes, you should work for what you want, but you can be happy along the way. If we’re too serious and too stressed just so we can make tons of money, it will backfire on us. It can be through a disease or through personal relationships being sacrificed.
We only get one shot in life. After this life, there’s none. So why do we have to spend it being unhappy, selfish, and miserable? If there’s one thing we should focus on, I think it should be figuring out how to make our self and the people around us more happy. How do we fight misery, sadness, and even violence? We can do this by creating a happy space. The first step is internal happiness. Start within and radiate. Try it, and you’ll see.
Slow living MD 