On Wanting Happiness
by markhofreiter
The following is the 4th chapter in AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words
by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the Center for Spiritual Exchange
“I was saying that we don’t want to be happy. We want other things. Or let’s put it more accurately: We don’t want to be unconditionally happy. I’m ready to be happy provided I have this and that and the other thing. But this is really to say to our friend or to our God or to anyone, ‘You are my happiness. If I don’t get you, I refuse to be happy.’ It’s so important to understand that. We cannot imagine being happy without those conditions. That’s pretty accurate. We cannot conceive of being happy without them. We’ve been taught to place our happiness in them.
“So that’s the first thing we need to do if we want to come awake, which is the same thing as saying: if we want to love, if we want freedom, if we want joy and peace and spirituality. In that sense, spirituality is the most practical thing in the whole wide world. I challenge anyone to think of anything more practical than spirituality as I have defined it—not piety, not devotion, not religion, not worship, but spirituality—waking up, waking up! Look at the heartache everywhere, look at the loneliness, look at the fear, the confusion, the conflict in the hearts of people, inner conflict, outer conflict. Suppose somebody gave you a way of getting rid of all of that? Suppose somebody gave you a way to stop that tremendous drainage of energy, of health, of emotion that comes from these conflicts and confusion. Would you want that? Suppose somebody showed us a way whereby we would truly love one another, and be at peace, be at love. Can you think of anything more practical than that? But, instead, you have people thinking that big business is more practical, that politics is more practical, that science is more practical. What’s the earthly use of putting a man on the moon when we cannot live on the earth?”
Awareness 
I find I am happiest with what is. That I am most agitated when things are not going the why I WANT them to go. If I look for ways to be helpful with what is; mold myself to life, I am content and at peace. That doesn’t mean I sit and have no opinions or if I should loose my job, I sit like a lump and nothing.
If I find myself in a conversation with someone who is difficult for me to suffer, might have tried to shout them down in the past; make them understand me and my superior point of view. Having been layed off of work or unable to find employment, I might have been horribly depressed and sitting at home for days on end. But in awareness I see, as in the first case, someone who was molded in a different person than me and who’s opinion may be helpful to me in some way as yet unknown to me. And as for jobs, In awareness I know jobs are everywhere! And while you I may be agitated about job prospects now, it will pass as it always does and if I apply some creative thinking, work, flexibility and patience to this issue, I will change the problem into an opportunity.