Making others happy

  Pamela Ellis - Mixed Emotions Painting

Can you force someone else to do something? I’ll be a little liberal and say no. I believe that every human has a right to choose and can in fact choose. It is a choice to be forced around. It is a choice to let someone else make the decision. I personally would rather stick to my own judgment than take someone else’s advice. My reason is simple: if my decision is wrong, I have only myself to blame. If I follow someone else’s decision, I would later blame the them and would hate myself for doing so.
People find the latter option easier though. Their theory is that they do it to make someone else happy. But tell me something: if that person means anything to you, will you fake happiness? And if you mean anything to that person, will they be happy to make you do something you don’t want to? I have tried before to make everyone in my life happy and have failed miserably; in doing the “acts” that my loved ones wanted I was stifling the things I wanted to do, which in turn made me unhappy. Then the acts didn’t mean anything; they became trivial when that sorrow of mine came to the forefront.

I have found an easier way to make the people I love happy: making myself happy. Now that I channel my energy to ensure my happiness, everyone around me is happy, even though they don’t approve of all the acts I perform.