There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.

David Burns

When it comes down to happiness you can only rely on yourself. This may seem egocentric at the first glance and I don’t want to say that another person or situation can’t possibly make you happy. I’m rather seeing this with a greater distance, I take a look at a longer span of life.

Let’s take a happy couple for example. Of course they make each other feel good in thousands of ways and you could definitely say that they can rely on each others caring for happiness. But what happens if one of the persons dies? Is the other one commited to be sad, is the other person commited to be a victim to fate and circumstances? I don’t think so and since you and only you in person are the only one you will live your whole life with, from birth to death, you should rely on yourself when it comes to deep and infinite happiness. I’m talking fullfilling, everlasting, strong happiness, not entertaining, relatively short happiness. See the difference?

Also this applies to your responsibility for other peoples happiness. It is good to give other people a good feeling, to “make them happy”. But you are in no way responsible for the happiness of other people and you can’t possibly be, how could you be so powerfull? You are just responsible for your own happiness!

By the way I brought this quote up today because of an event this morning. A little child was crying in its baby buggy and my co-worker directly adressed this child, which he did not know, and said: “Why do you cry? You are just destroying your own good mood, don’t do that!” Than he continued talking to the child, which went silent during the talk, listening to the words he could not probably understand, whith eyes wide open. Not really a special event, but it was nice and suprised me so I remembered this quote 🙂

/phil