What attitudes or behaviors can we adopt to make ourselves feel happy? We all have in common the difficulty of maintaining our emotional stability due to all the problems that the world faces right now. There are two articles that we could consider as doors to happiness. Starting with David Steindl-Rast’s speech, “Want to be happy? Be grateful” who gives us a clear message that to be happy, we must be grateful for every opportunity that life gives us. Art Markman's article, “Why Other People are the Key to Our Happiness,” tells us that our interactions influence our emotional state every day. For us to feel happy, we must appreciate what we have and strive to have positive interactions with people.
Now more than ever, we have to learn to appreciate life and everything we have. As little as it may be, we are fortunate to have something during these difficult times. David Steindl-Rast states in his speech, “Grateful living, that is the thing. And how can we live gratefully? By experiencing, by becoming aware that every moment is a given moment, as we say. It's a gift" (“Grateful”). Every opportunity we have right now is a gift that life is giving us. Being able to video call with a family member, see them smile, and listen to them nowadays has so much sentimental value.. We do not know if, by next week, we will have the opportunity to listen to them again. There are many reasons why we should be grateful and happy for every opportunity that presented itself to us today. Now let us imagine a world where we are all grateful for what we currently have. There would be less competition. Empathy, along with solidarity, would abound. Apart from being happy, we also need to be grateful to create a better world. Steindl-Rast says, “We rush through life. We don't stop. We miss the opportunity because we don't stop. We have to stop. We have to get quiet. "This means that we live in the rush of working, studying, and doing other activities in order to one day meet a goal that we think will make us "happy." Meanwhile, we live in stress, comparing our lives with someone else's, and we live unhappily. Let us take a few minutes out of our day and analyze every opportunity that life has given us during the day. Be thankful for being there at that time; for that coffee we could serve ourselves a few hours ago. Let us be grateful that we were able to see our family or a friend today. There are many gifts that life offers us, and we do not realize it.
In the same manner, Art Markman teaches us another behavior that we can adopt to be happy. He shows us how the people around us can affect our emotions. Our interactions throughout the day contribute to the way we feel. Without any study and statistics, it is easy to see how our mood changes when positive and cheerful people surround us. As a teenager, we can realize the direction our lives take when interacting with people full of dreams and goals, how our mood changes and how we lead our lives when we spend time with negative people complain about everything. We become more irritable, tired, and unwilling to do anything. That is why it is imperative to know how to manage our interactions since they influence our behavior. Now, let us talk about how a simple gesture by a stranger influences our mood. A greeting, a smile, or a "hey, have a nice day!". They are small details that, in one way or another, generate happiness. Markman states, "In addition, on days when people interacted with both their close friends and their acquaintances, they were happier than on days when they interacted less often with their close friends and their acquaintances" (“Why Other People”). He is right. We spend an afternoon with our family members cooking and sharing moments, and it improves our mood. I remember when my family got together for a picnic in Flushing Meadows Park, and I was on a high for a few days after that. I smiled more, and because of that, I felt more people smiled back at me. Feeling happy made me feel like a better person. If we all applied these behaviors in our daily lives, we would create a better social environment.
In summary, David Steindl-Rast, together with Art Markman, reflectively teach us behaviors and attitudes that will guide us to the path of happiness. Being grateful and the interactions we have throughout the day would dramatically change the way we lead our lives. They would make us more caring and, above all, happy. They make us reflect on how easy it is to find happiness in our days and how we are getting complicated because we have poorly focused on the concept of happiness. Be grateful, be aware of the gifts of life and be a better citizen towards our environment ... following these simple steps will guide us to happiness.