International Day of Happiness: Occasion Not to Celebrate only, But also to Promote the True Concept of Happiness (PART 2)
The need for using the ‘Day of Happiness’ for actual initiation of all persons in the family, society, country and the world individually in the process of achieving ‘Happiness’ should be accepted by the organizations and the people who celebrate a particular day as ‘Happiness Day’. We should realize that these celebrations become meaningful only if we can create happiness within each individual. The celebrations we organize on the ‘Day of Happiness’ now are helpful only to remind the people about happiness about which they are well aware as it is being experienced by each individual at some moment or other. What we need is to train each one to be happy always throughout the life or as much time as possible. For this there is also need for promoting and ensuring the participation, co-operation and active help of our spiritual organizations and their leaders who are now engaged in spiritual discourses and training in numerous national and international platforms.
By celebrating festivals we get temporary happiness, not lasting. We may forget or ignore all our worries for some time when we are busy with celebrations. In this sense, they can be considered as stress relievers, but for the time being. But they are not providing lasting solution for our worries and unhappiness in life. They are perhaps opportunities for bringing people together in a friendly mood that reduces our frictions and mental worries, preparing a ground for happiness. So festivals form just a preliminary first step in our journey towards happiness. All festivals and the participation in them should be seen in this spirit. For example, the World Happiness Fest is now being organized annually by the World Happiness Foundation for a week. The Fest in 2021 attracted over 10 million people from 76 countries. For the 2022 Fest a 6 day Happiness Celebration is proposed from March 17th – 22nd, 2022. Many leading happiness and well-being experts from the fields of education, business, science, art, technology, music, and policy participate in various events in the Fest. But there is no reliable information about how many of these millions of people who participate in these Fests could sustain their happiness they got while attending the Fests in their life thereafter.
It was in the General Assembly of the United Nations on 12 July 2012 that a resolution, proclaiming March 20th as the ‘International Day of Happiness’ was passed. The resolution for this was initiated by Bhutan that has already recognized the value of national happiness over national income in the early 1970s. The United Nations has been celebrating the International Day of Happiness since 2013, recognising the importance of happiness in the lives of people. Also, it was in recognition of the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals that the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the UN which seek to end poverty, reduce inequality and protect our planet, the three key aspects of well-being and happiness, were launched in 2015. It was also in recognition of the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples.
We should, however, remember that all these celebrations give us only opportunities for temporary enjoyment or sensual pleasures and not any lasting happiness. Momentary happiness may come and go. Festivals and celebrations provide only this momentary happiness which is not sustainable. We need to look elsewhere, not in celebrations alone, for a comprehensive understanding of the ways and means of realizing lasting happiness. A spiritual approach is basically what is to be followed for this. In fact this idea is the guiding factor that led the Bhutan King in investigating into and suggesting a concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’ around 1972. The credit goes to the then King His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He was interested in finding out ways and means that could develop, protect and preserve the people’s cultural and spiritual wealth in the course of seeking happiness. He desired to have a holistic and human centred change, not at the cost environmental degradation, cultural erosion and spiritual impoverishment. The formation of a ‘Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Commission’ about a decade ago shows his determination to follow the principles of GNH in the formulation and implementation of all development policies and plans in the country. The Commission brought out the first GNH Report in 2013. Although Bhutan has held the idea of GNH since 1972, a measure of National Happiness, the ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ could be computed only by 2008. Based on a survey data from 12 of the 20 Districts of Bhutan the Centre for Bhutan Studies released for the first time its Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index, the first quantitative measure of happiness, on 26 November, 2008.
-to be coninued