Six personal secrets of Happy people

For all those concerned, happiness is a subjective issue. Happy people is a broad classification. The following is a presentation of conclusions based on evidence both personal and from experiences told to me through reliable, first hand witnesses.
Before continuing to read, find a focal point for this blog. Find a happy person and where you stand in relation to them. Perhaps you are one of the Happy People in your circle of friends, perhaps a Happy person is a close friend of yours or perhaps a Happy person is your worst nightmare, the most annoying type of person life could have created.

For each of you, I hope these few secrets that I’ve learnt over the years are an interesting, if not enlightening, experience.

The first and possibly most important truth all must know is that:

NO ONE is ALWAYS happy.

People have occasionally proclaimed to me, “Evon! How’re you always so happy?”

I laughed.

Only I could hear the voice in my head, which said, “I do not know you well enough to show you my sadness.”

This is often the case with many people mistaken to be ALWAYS happy.

With that being said, let me warn you now that many of the secrets about happy people revolve around their sadness. I guess you could call this a dark twist.

     1.     They are happy because they are grateful for their life.

When I was 13 years old, the civil war in Sri Lanka concluded. 

I witnessed it from my safe cocoon in New Zealand. 

There were photos circling through the news, bulk emails, forums, blogs and documentaries displaying the horrific events in Sri Lanka. 

My family had left when I was 6 years old and during my time there I never saw even fragments of the war – nothing. I was completely shielded from the 27-year war that was going on or I was just too oblivious then, to recall those memories today. 

Either way, when I saw the photos…piles of Tamil children, massacred and burnt on the street. Mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren, elderly – shelled, bleeding, hopeless – with no one looking out for them, no one caring what happened to them – their own country looking to destroy them. The world trying to wrangle away their only defence by labelling their army a terrorist group. My mum’s cousin (a journalist) mistaken for the daughter of the man leading the Tamil Tigers, dead. Other women striped of their dignity even in death. Family’s broken. Hearts wounded. Heads, hands, feet not necessarily attached. Injustice coating our motherland. I had a question in my head, which I asked God, “Why did I escape that and not them?”

This experience hit so close to home that the cries from across the ocean bought tears to my eyes. It hit my sense of belonging, it hit my trivial worries, it hit me right in the face.

Years later, when I turned 16, I remembered that moment of conclusion. 

Now, nothing that happened could shake me from where I stood – I believed in a God who had taken me to where I was that day and I knew he had a reason for placing me exactly there and I decided that life would be lived for that reason. This decision made me grateful; it made me happy beyond my wildest imagination. 

To think, I was chosen to live in this moment.

     2.     They have a lot of sadness inside.

Sadness is not a stranger to anyone. 

Whether it is thoughts of moments past or the loss of a future they once dreamed of, sadness shows itself as a “private number” to happy people – they don’t know when it will hit them. 
Just because you did not know them in the times when sadness was all they knew, it doesn't mean they have never had to face sadness before.

This sadness is often due to people rejecting them, excluding them by making them feel like outsiders, speaking condescendingly to them and treating them like silly idiots.

 Just know, you people who enjoy doing that, happy people seem like they see the world in rainbows and glitter but in reality they see the world exactly how it is – that’s why they choose to be so happy in the first place – to brighten up what seems so dark and dreary. You would be surprised how much of the world they have actually seen.

In other words, they see the light in utter darkness because they have been in the dark long enough and their eyes have adjusted.

     3.      Happy people hate being alone.

They know that when they are alone the thoughts of their past, fond memories and regrets, as well as the future they once hoped to have will come out to haunt them. 

Thoughts about reality – about the consequences of their decisions, about their actions in the past, about the person they are becoming are a happy person’s worst nightmare.

     4.     Emotions of people around us influence us easily.

Sad people make us sad. We hate the feeling of being sad. 

Happy people are the ones who decided to get like Gandhi and be the change they want to see in the world – happiness.


   5.      Happy people may have once been angry, jealous or bitter people. 

These happy people have hurt many others in their “previous life” as they like to think of it. The feeling of knowing that someone else is suffering because of you became too much for them and they converted to happy people – because the guilt drove away all the sadness.




     6.     Happy people love the spotlight.

 Happy people realised once during their lives, they don’t want to just watch other people be happy – they want to be happy too. 
Of a pair one will be the dancer and the other the watcher – we all want to dance once in a while.

Excuses that happy people make when you ask them, “are you okay? You seem sad.” 

When a happy person seems sad, know for a fact – they are sad. If they were a little unhappy they would be able to mask that over easily enough. True sadness gets through though because happy people are transparent even if they are not always honest.

1.     I’m tired (gives them an excuse to sound sad as well as look sad without people thinking they are actually sad).

2.     It’s just my time of the month (A valid excuse for every single problem to exist in the known universe…Hitler started WW2 ß it was probably his time of the month). 

3.     I’m ok (I can’t talk anymore because if I do I might cry or say something I will regret when my head is not clouded over with sadness).

4.     I think I just need to sleep (They believe that sleep will cure sadness. A morning is a new day, a fresh start. But it also takes away the weight of lying about being tired).

5.     NAH. WHY? I’m OK (defensive technique for loud people who tend to reply immediately. Often, I think, you can judge how much someone is hurt by how fast they reply to a suggestion of them being hurt).

Everyone is a happy person when they need to be. True happiness is when it lasts. By all means, judge people by what you see because they are only showing you as much as they want you to know - but don't label people and put them into your own classifications before understanding them. That will only make everyone involved, misunderstood.

P.S. The above comments are made in a generalized nature with the highly biased view of a highly biased blogger. Please, happy people, do not take offense if I have not described your secrets clearly as you would like them explained. I tried my best.

-evieroo.