- Parables -

Happiness 

[2]

Once upon the time there was a boy in the land of his Ancestors who was never happy. Riza was his name. His mother was a sad woman and his father seemed a happy man, but was not a good father to him.

One day Riza decided to leave his country for another. He was looking for a better place to live, where he could find happiness. He went from place to place always in search for this thing he had never experienced: happiness.

Time passed and the boy, Riza, became a man; but happiness never befriended him once. In his quest, though, he met a lot of people from all walks of life. But not one of them knew anything about happiness.

One day Riza went to a far-away country to work. It was an Island, the Red Isle it was called. People there were happy; children, women and men always had smiles on their faces. They were content people.

“How is it that these people are always so happy?” - Riza asked himself. “They are poor. Most of them live in small timber one-room houses, with no furniture, and neither gold nor silver they possess. Money is almost unknown to them. Disease is ever present at their door; death always in town…Nevertheless, these people are happy. How come?

One day whilst traveling through a small and remote village an old woman welcomed him saying: “Tapa-bata tantely ny fo no mameno azy. - This is not very much, really, but I’m giving it to you with my whole heart.”

In offering to Riza a plate of rice with a small bowl of juicy herbs, the old woman gave him the answer to his question: “Why are the people of this isle always so happy?”

Thoreau talking about riches versus poverty said: “A man is rich in proportion to what he can do without”. 

But I say: ‘It is not so much what you have that makes you happy; but what you give to others’.  

Finally, Paul in Acts 20: 35, says: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving.”

Nadir Martello

Contact: nadir@sheddinglight.info

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