How to make the International Happiness Day even happier!

International Happiness Day!

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.

Luis Vicente Garcia