Nobody Deserves To Be Happy!

Many self-help gurus will espouse the virtues, the sheer righteousness if you will, of deserving to be happy. You deserve to be happy? What does this truly even mean? (meant to be read in a most sarcastic tone of voice with a slight touch of incredulity thrown in for good measure).

I take umbrage, I cry foul to this so called deservedness. What makes you so special? For that matter, what makes me so special? None of us deserve to be happy any more so than the next guy or girl.

People, living breathing people, are being subjected to atrocities all over our planet in ways that some of us cannot even bear to think about, because we’d never sleep cozy in our beds at night if we did. Aren’t these people deserving of this ‘happiness’ also? They often times don’t experience it, because of someone else’s pursuit of happiness.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it ~ George Bernard Shaw

In the Osho Zen Tarot deck there is one card that stands above the rest and is unique to the deck. It is the card of “No-Thingness”. It simply means attachment to nothing leaves room for everything. And this is the case from belongings of things to perceived belongings of people, and back again. None of us own anything in this life except our thoughts and our actions, should we choose to.

Some of my clients cry out in horror when I use the Osho Zen deck and the card of “No-Thingness” comes out. It is an all black card with a rim of white. It’s almost as if the colors themselves carry some sort of stigma in the mind’s eye.  But it’s the best possible card you could hope for, because it frees the soul from the stigma of attachment and entitlement.

But I digress. There is nothing wrong with being happy. I’m not saying there is. But we’re not entitled to it. Happiness is fleeting, it is a moment, a breath, a sight to behold. And then it fades away to come again another day, and then leaving us alone with our thoughts, again, for another day.

I say to you, “Be content”. Because if you understand this, then your very state of contentment would become your own personal state of happiness that you seek. Because at the end of the day, if each man and woman would be at peace within themselves then there would not be any wars upon anyone and we would be genuinely happy within our own skin.