Happiness, for spazio + spadoni, is making others happy
On World Happiness Day, that of spazio + spadoni is to spread works of mercy and accompanying religious women
Every year on March 20, the world celebrates World Happiness Day, a date established in 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly with the aim of promoting the importance of happiness as a fundamental right for all human beings.
It is a day to ask the quintessential question: what is happiness? And to ask the question: how do I achieve it?
As Pope Francis told the young people present at WYD 2015, “the search for happiness is common to all people of all times and ages” because God himself has placed “in the heart of every man and woman an irrepressible desire for happiness.”
That thirst for the infinite that makes the rich young man go away sad, that overturns priorities,
he drives so many men and women to the ends of the earth.
This is an opportunity to reflect not only on the concept of happiness, but also on how the pursuit of well-being can be achieved collectively, through universal values such as solidarity, compassion and, above all, mercy.
Certainly, happiness is subjective, but in the long run everyone feels within himself if he has chased the dreams and values that made him happy, that gave him a full life. There is no right or wrong, good or bad, but simply a coincidence between heart and smile, an awareness that makes one feel good.
Yet, according to the latest Ipsos Happiness Index, a survey of 30 countries, we are becoming increasingly unhappy. There would be a need to investigate the reasons for this, although a large part contributes to the economic and social factors that, pe r example, drop Burundi, the poorest country in the world, to the bottom of the list.
But what if the parameters changed? What if we looked at well-being with different eyes?
Perhaps then we would explain the mystery of so many African children with smiles in their eyes?
For this year, the theme the theme chosen by Action for Happiness, a nonprofit movement of people from 160 countries who coordinate the Campaign, is “Caring and Sharing.” That is to say, true happiness comes from caring for one another, caring for the fate of a friend or a stranger who lives on the other side of the world.
This is the concept of happiness embraced by spazio + spadoni: spreading the works of mercy so that the brothers and sisters reached no longer hunger or thirst, no longer feel alone but welcomed, rediscover themselves loved; in sickness, in doubt, in error, in daily actions.
To accompany religious sisters and their congregations in the most remote villages and give them support, friendship, trust,
Ultimately, for spazio + spadoni, happiness is a simple thing. It is striving to make others happy.