Searching Outside of Self

Where is happiness found? How can satisfaction be achieved? Too oftenpeople engage in a frantic search for these elusive feelings. Looking outside of ourselves is common. What are some external sources? A partial list includes material possesions, money...and even a day of the week(maybe Friday)? How often do you think that a particular person or a specific thing can make you happy? This belief carries grave risks such as dependancy. Relying on an external source for happiness puts control of your life outside yourself. If externals make you happy, they can also make you unhappy...
We constantly tell ourselves such things as,"If I could just go back to school and acquire more knowledge - perhaps get a master's degree- then I will be happy." But are people with master's degrees or Ph.D.'s any happier than the rest of us?...it is misleading to expect [knowledge] to bring us peace, love and happiness. Another misleading thought is that money will bring hapiness. "People grossly exagerrate the impact that higher incomes would have no subjective well-being,"said Alan Krueger, a professor of ecenomics and public affairs at Princeton University. A wealth of data in recent decades has shown that once personal wealth exceeds about $12,000 a year, more money produces virtually no increase in life satisfaction. From 1958 to 1987, for example, income in Japan grew fivefold, but researchers could find no corresponding increase in happiness.
-Person to Person by Sharon L. Hanna

This is a chapter I had to read for my Sociology class. All in all, I am grateful that my source of happiness (I call it joy) doesn't come from a fleeting source that changes every now and then. Rather, my joy depends on a soveriegn God, His name is Jesus Christ, and He is constant, which means my joy never changes too, no matter what the circumstance is, I am always joyful.

Also, if I were to sum up this chapter in one sentence, it would be this:
"This also is vanity and a striving after the wind (Ecclesiastes, many verses)...the end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Soli deo gloria.