It's all about happiness

I am often asked the question, what does it take to be good? I have come to the conclusion that being good is the quest for happiness. Good people are happy people, bad people are miserable people. Being good is a choice and so is being happy.

You can't buy happiness, although many people try. You can buy temporary thrills and entertainment, but eventually the new and exciting gets old and boring. The only way to have lasting happiness is to live like happy people live. There is an old adage that goes, wickedness never was happiness. If that is true, then righteousness is always happiness. In the Eight Pearls of Is we learn that to be satisfied our needs have to be met. These needs can only be met with the proper action.

The first pearl talks about our need for Eternal Life. Who wants to die? I mean, what happy person wants to cease to exist? We all crave, yearn and will pay almost any price to stay alive and healthy. If we could pay to stay young we all would try and pay the price. The pyramids in Egypt were built to give the royalty a chance for immortality. Our health care system today is almost as impressive a structure and tries to accomplish the same thing.

Eternal life is the most important of all religious topics. No matter how we believe in God, or who we believe God is, His ability to grant Eternal Life is at the core of those beliefs. Without dictating conscious or suggesting one way to worship God, this is a sure fact; as Human Beings, we must humbly submit to the will of God in all things. We must each decide who God is and what he expects of us. The hope for Eternal Life is a need that is burned into our humanity. No amount of political correctness can wish it away. Since it's part of us, we might as well admit it.

When we decide to humbly submit to God we are granted a liberating feeling of youthful vitality. Even the elderly can be like children when they know they will live after death. Is this why religion is so important to people? If the feeling of youth and vitality is so important to all of us, why have we stopped talking about it? The Fountain of Youth will not be found in a bottle, it will be found inside our own beliefs and actions.