Favorite Inspirational Quotes

Happiness doesn’t depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have.  We can be happy with little and miserable with much.

William Dempster Hoard

I’ve actually been doing some reading on this topic of happiness lately and it’s given me a lot to think about.  Hoard is correct that our happiness doesn’t depend on things.  If it does, we are in sad shape for those things can be taken from us at any time.

We can lose them through accident, theft, fire, tornado, hurricane, war, etc, as too many people know around the world.  I faced this possibility already once this year, the possibility of losing almost everything including livestock, as I was forced to evacuate from a very nearby fire.  I am intimately aware of the loss that can happen.  I know of others who did lose everything including family pets and livestock.  Looking at your window and seeing your cows and horses on fire and not being able to do anything but run is not something to experience.

This goes for the people in our lives as well, unfortunately.  Our happiness cannot depend upon the people in our lives either.  People come and go.

Our happiness cannot depend upon anything outside of us.  That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy those things and maybe collect or get the things I enjoy.  I enjoy the people around me as well.  But, if they are taken away, does my enjoyment go as well.  Or can I still enjoy the memory of those things and people?

So if our happiness does not, simply cannot, depend on what we have, then what does it depend upon?  Well, as the saying goes, “Happiness is an inside job.”  We have to work on us and on our attitudes.  It truly is only what goes on inside of us that matters.  Everything else can be taken.  But what we have inside us, what we are deep down, goes with us wherever we are.  That is where we must put our attention.

Tags: William Dempster Hoard