Contagious Happiness

Ever heard ofa young child's laughter before? Somehow or rather, the kids' laughter is able to rub off some happiness to you. At least that is what happen to me on Sunday.

I was on my way to an appointment when I met this young Indian kid around 1-2 years old. She was having a lot of fun and was laughing and laughing. His laughter resonates with me and I feel happy.

Such an incident actually caught my attention. Let’s look at it this way. When we hang out with friends, we do share a bit of laughter and smiles. That is because we are laughing at the same joke or things. But this incident is different. I have no idea why the kid is having so much fun, but I know he is having a lot of fun through his laughter. Even when we are on a bus or walking along a street, when we hear people laugh, usually the next response that we have would be to criticize the person as ‘cuckoo’, ‘gila’ or ‘siao’ to name a few. The person’s laughter does not make us laugh at all. It does not resonate with us.

Why such a big contrast? Both are laughter, comes from human but one resonates and bring joy and happiness and the other only invites criticism, destructive some more. After much thought I finally know the reason, or I think I know the actual reason.

For the kid, who is only 1-2 yrs old, he is not burdened or conditioned by the society as yet. His happiness is genuine and it is a full release of his emotions. This is why one can sense that he is happy through his laughter and we all know genuine laughter and happiness is contagious.

For us adults, we are already conditioned by the society, we have burdens to carry and so on. So much so that we are so stressed, we do not know how to have a genuine good time. Our laughter contains the stress and burden that the society has given us thus it is not able to rub off on people. And we usually do not let our happiness show fully in our laughter because most of us do not want to be labeled as ‘cuckoo’, ‘gila’ or ‘siao’.

Maybe it is time that we really think about it. Does it matter what label that we have as long as we can feel our happiness and joy fully? Does it matter that people who do not have a stake in your happiness should control how happy you are?

Burden and stress are something that we cannot get rid of society, so why not learn to let go and be able to live with it but not let it affect what is good for us and that is having genuine happiness.

Cheers! :D