Happiness in Relationship

Tal Ben-Shahar notes on how love and sacrifice are two essential elements in happiness in relationships. Most of the times, I see this as a hard combination. Sacrificing something is hard enough and sometimes people may not appreciate the outcome of it. As being a Christian, I can relate to this with my relationship with God. As humans, it’s hard to make sacrifices in our lives. Recently, I was blessed with happiness that God has rewarded me. It was an amazing experience and it still makes me speechless. For the past years that I have been working at my part time job, I was always selfish with the hours that I worked. I had my mind set on making as much money as I can by working longer hours than normal part timers. Since I started taking more classes than usual, I was exhausted both physically and mentally. I didn’t what to do except to just pray. At Sunday services, my pastor has been recently explaining on happiness. Happiness is not a goal nor an achievement, but rather a gift. The pastor explained that if we sacrificed, God will fill that sacrifice with His gift, not too little of it or too much of it. I really couldn’t grasp the concept too well.

             The days were passing and I was sick and tired of everything. I couldn’t take it anymore and brought down my stubbornness. I actually cut back off a few hours and that meant losing some money. I was worried since I had to pay several expenses, but I still believed and prayed. Then it happened. My sisters in Korea emailed me how they would help me by giving me some money each month. It was weird how everything fell into place. My worries were gone and even though I was physically and mentally tired, I felt happy. That happiness gave me a push to not give up and an experience of the strong bond between me and God.

             However, in reality relationship between people is different in my opinion. There has to be balance of sacrifice and sharing between people. For example, my relationship with my girlfriend has lasted two years already. She was born here and I have only been here in America for about 4 to 5 years. Also we do have somewhat of an age gap. Despite the barriers, both of us made small sacrifices for each other. I think that’s why our relationship is still strong and growing. By making sacrifices, we tend to grow and learn to understand each other. We understand the people who we really are and accept our flaws and traits. Just by doing this, we both feel the happiness that we’ve been searching for, the happiness of building towards that.