I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy!

The truth you speak has no past and no future. it is, and that's all it needs to be."
Richard Bach - Illusions

With all the poverty, disease, hunger, war and unhappiness present in the world today the title statement may sound overly hedonistic, thoughtless and selfish.

It is like the often repeated dinner table scenario from our youth - "You will stay there and finish all your vegetables. You just don't realise how lucky you are. Do you know how many starving people there are in the world?" Which elicits the cheeky retort: "Well you can send my untouched Brussels sprouts to them with my blessing!"

Ridiculous? Yeah, but making me eat ALL my Brussels sprouts because more than half the world is starving is equally ridiculous. Brussels sprouts, yuck - years of therapy to erase them from my psyche.

Think about it - burning schools to protest the lack of education only exacerbates the lack of education, it does not solve the lack of education problem.

- Will suffering disease yourself alleviate the disease of others? 
- By starving yourself will you fill the bellies of the world's starving?
- Will going to war with your neighbour on some pretext stop the wars scattered so thickly throughout our world?
- By experiencing misery, suffering, pain, grief yourself, will you reduce these plagues so prevalent in our world today?

I think not!

A healthy doctor adds more value to his patient than a sick doctor. A well nourished farmer can feed more starving people than one suffering from malnutrition. A wealthy person can give more to charity than someone battling to make ends meet themselves. A happy person is able to spread more joy than a sad person.

But you cannot give what you do not have!

So the place to start is not by emptying your coffers and giving away all you have. This only adds you to the list of poverty stricken people and makes the burden heavier. You must have a stable income yourself to set up a tithing programme for charity.

The place to start is to be happy, stable, secure, fulfilled, focused and prosperous in your own right you create time and resources which are of benefit to those who, at present must do without.

This is not selfish it is practical.

Make a point of being happy - it is not hard, it is a state of mind!

Allow it to happen to you and go spread it around!