Suppose you're walking along with a swing and a smile on your face and a glow from within, and somebody says, "My, you look happy." You'd probably say, "I am happy." But what if that someone asked not "Why are you happy?" but "What is happiness?" What would you say?

Would you be tempted to think, "What kind of foolish question is that when the answer's so obvious? Why, everyone knows what happiness is. Happiness is having a loving family and friends. It's living in the place that makes you feel you never want to live anywhere else. It's being a success in what you set out to accomplish. To put it briefly, happiness is when you have everything going your way. Isn't it?"

Well, let's think about that for a moment. Is there anyone who hasn't felt at some time: If I could only have this or do that, I'd really be happy? And then when we get it or do it, what happens? We may feel happy for a while perhaps, but it's never enough. There's always something missing. What is it? Why is it when we get what we want, we often don't feel satisfied? It could be—very simply—that we haven't as yet accepted as much as we should the provable fact that happiness is spiritual, that nothing material ever really satisfies.

Actually, our failures to find or to keep real happiness are what awaken us to seek happiness in Spirit, God. That's what awakened me. When a friend, loved very much and depended on (perhaps too much), let it be known that the well of caring had gone dry, I was desolate. The experience brought to mind a passage where the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, asks "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank?" ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 266.} I also remembered how I'd once said, "That will never happen to me!" Now it had. "And now what?" I wondered. Then unexpectedly this answer from a poem by Mrs. Eddy came: "...God is good, and loss is gain." ^{Poems, p. 4.}

I questioned that. How in the world could the loss of a treasured friendship be gain? But I kept listening, and then these words came from a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal:

Who was—is—this satisfying "Thy"? Why, as this same hymn says it: "My best, my ever Friend." ^{Hymnal, No. 224.} God Himself. And His "name"? His nature—Love, Life, Soul, Truth, our heavenly Father-Mother.

Now I began to understand more about the loss that is gain. God's fullness is always there for us, no matter what loss—no matter what unhappiness—may come into our experience. In fact, what appears to be a loss becomes a gain when it turns us to God. We can never lose the joy of ever-caring friendship, of someone to look to, to depend on, when we know Him as our always present Friend.

That did it! I resolved: "I'm going to ... No! I am not going to be happy, I am happy. Right now. I've got to be! Because that's the way God made me." As Science and Health explains, "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love." ^{Science and Health, p. 57.} Truth and Love are names for God. And that means happiness, being born of God, belongs to God and therefore is inherent in man's being. It is one of the ways God expresses Himself through the man He created in His own image. Happiness is a quality of Love and Truth within the spiritual consciousness of each one of us—not outside of us, not dependent on someone else or some thing for its manifestation in our heart and life.

Happiness, being spiritual, belongs to God's man just as much as do health, intelligence, love, obedience, trust. Because happiness is of God, it can never be lost to us, nor can anyone or anything prevent us from proving this. Being spiritual, happiness is neither a person, a place, nor a thing. It is the manifestation of Immanuel, "God with us."

Christ Jesus never failed to bless and comfort—to show his love and bring happiness to others. And he did not always wait for those in need to come to him; he often went to them. Mrs. Eddy writes of happiness: "It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it." ^Ibid.

The desire to help others should be such a natural expression of good that no one is overwhelmed by it. A higher realization of this natural caring came to me while I was watching a news report on television. The place was a town caught by high floods. A woman was standing in front of her house. In tears, holding her hands over her mouth, she was hardly able to speak.

As I recall, the reporter asked, "Have you lost everything? Are you going to move?" He apparently assumed her tears were over her losses. She shook her head. "No, no! It's these people. I don't know them—they're not neighbors. I've never seen them before." These people she was talking about were there with shovels and brooms and buckets, working to make her house livable. Her tears were not tears of hopelessness or helplessness but of joy—of a happiness that was almost overwhelming her. "Why," she said, "they're not even from this town!"

The whole scene made me want to be one of "these people," because it was so obvious they were meeting a much greater need than restoring a flooded house. They were meeting a need we all share—the need to reach out to others. Do you hesitate to do so? Why? Because you feel you'll be rebuffed? I used to feel that way. Happiness shared with family and friends—that was all right. But with strangers? That took a little learning, but the time came when I understood that when we love with the warmth of God's caring—"for he careth for [us]" ^{I Pet. 5:7.} —we "are no more strangers ... but ... of the household of God." ^{Eph. 2:19 .} If we trust God, He will show us the when and how of meaningful sharing.

At this point you might very well be asking, But how can I show my oneness with others? How can I help someone be happy? In the simplest of ways. It doesn't have to be something that's going to appear on television! It starts with a heart filled with warm, friendly caring and your sharing of yourself. Real love waits for God to open the way. And that opening can come to you on the street, in a store, on a bus, at the checkout counter in a market. What a lift of happiness it is to see faces—drawn and sad—light up, even smile, because you've spoken to them with Christly affection. How it touches the heart when, nodding goodbye, you hear someone say, "Thank you for talking to me."

Sometimes we can give a little more than just friendliness to someone. I read something once that seemed to me to make an excellent observation about real happiness, even though it doesn't have that word in it at all. This is it: "After the verb 'To Love,' 'To Help' is the most beautiful verb in the world!" ^{Bertha von Suttner, "Epigram," quoted in John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 11th ed. rev. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946), p. 1083 .} Verbs indicate action. When we put into action our God-given happiness—share it with all mankind—there's nothing more fulfilling. Even though we may seem to be going through some unhappiness in our life at the moment, we can persist in knowing: I've got to be happy! That's how God made me.