ICPTR

It is all about happiness. Although happiness is relative, still, there are those who say that they are happy, and there are those who say they are not. But who are those who are neither happy nor sad? Whenever I think about J.S. Mill’s quote “ask whether I am happy and I cease to be”, I find myself in a state of mind where I am neither happy nor sad. How can I be happy when I know that there are millions of children suffering from curable diseases, who die of starvation, who are trained to use arms, who don’t have the opportunity to go to school, who are stripped of their childhood, who think more about what they are going to eat today than play, who are paying for crimes they have not committed, who would rather die today than think about tomorrow, for today’s miseries never end?

Then how can I be happy? I am happy because my children are fortunate to have the life of a decent human being; but I am sad when I think about the other children of the world. Then, I am Sappy. I know that there are millions of people out there who are sappy, too, and I am happy that they too think about the children of humanity, and that they want for those children what they want for their own children. It is thus through sappiness that we can realise greater happiness. As long as there is injustice to the children of the world, I am sad and so are my children, for I remind them about those children who are children no more, hoping that each one of them will grow up into a good person, eager to help make the less forunate of us happy, too.