The United
Nations General Assembly approved back in 2012 that March 20 of each year would
be regarded as the International Happiness day. Happy day, as the UN Foundation
explains: “As part of this global engagement, people will be reminded that
everyone deserves a chance at a happy, healthy life… ”. For such an important
endeavor, the UN is asked people all over the world to make donations to “support
UN humanitarian efforts designed to increase those opportunities for the people
who need it most”.
We all need
to live a happy life and we should. Some will be happier than others, anyhow.
However, as it happens, the reality is that some will be happier while others
will even be sad. People in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from hunger and
civil wars; people in Ukraine are going through separation; people in Venezuela
are being jailed and killed from a new kind of dictatorship; or people in Malaysia
cry from not knowing the whereabouts of a missing plane. So people, I would
say, in several parts of the world are not happy, nor are they celebrating a
happy day. Happiness is a right we all have to fight for, as freedom and
liberty are being also fought. Not an easy task.
To be happy
is to live well, to educate the young, to have enough food in the table, to
live in a safe place, to have a job opportunity and to have a future. To be
happy encompasses many aspects of life that many in the world take for granted.
To be happy means that we have to search for life’s meaning. This is what
Happiness day for me needs to be.
Many
organizations and countries have small but meaningful events to commemorate the
International Day of Happiness, although their people or people in some
countries might not even know it exists. An organization called Happiness International is encouraging
people to make a Happiness Day Resolution by choosing one action
supporting their happiness to continue developing over the coming year. It
should last for a year and it should develop into other happiness resolutions.
It might as well be an even higher resolution: to bring happiness into those
desolated areas in the world. Not an easy task.
So to end
on a happy note, I pray that the UN, the countries and organizations that have
and will be celebrating this international day of happiness start working in a
bigger goal: to find ways to bring real happiness and help to others that might
be suffering in those ‘not happy’ areas of the world, and help create a sense
of light in their future in order that they can too become happy on a future
date.