What makes you happy

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, there is a general feeling, a false feeling, that there is a false feeling in the world that somehow as long as you are happy, all is right with your world. As long as you are happy. So people say, as long as we are happy. People say about their children, for example, that, you know, what are they doing? How are they? Oh, no, no, no. As long as they are happy, it's fine. You know, whatever they are doing. Now, this is, I say this is a fallacy because if you think about it, there are people in the world who are happy doing things which are in themselves ranging from a waste of time to something which, things which are actually evil. The finest example of that is social media. Today, one of the biggest, if not the biggest calamity, the biggest pandemic, the biggest epidemic that is completely, you know, destroying generations, not even one generation. is social media addiction, screen addiction. Imagine we are living in a world where we have managed to turn it upside down. For example, things that we should keep private, things that we kept private, we meaning as human beings, we kept private for centuries, for millennia, generation after generation. Things which we guarded jealously, things which we did not reveal to anyone, many times even to people we should have revealed them to. We didn't share them with anyone except with our very closest, nearest and dearest. People we completely trusted. All that information today, we voluntarily, without being forced to, and without seeking or getting a single cent in compensation, we put it out there for the entire world and his wife to see. On Instagram, on Facebook, on Snapchat and God knows what. Our most private information, starting from something as mundane and apparently, harmless as what you eat, pictures of your food, pictures of your plates, to things which are potentially dangerous, which we should never ever reveal. Everything is out there. And we know very well that those who we are giving this to voluntarily, whether it's these companies who, run these social media, who own the social media, or whether it is people who use information they get from social media, to do other things with it. We know that many of these things, many of these kinds of people, take our information and use it for their purposes. The most benign result of that is that they make humongous amounts of money, while we get nothing. They make a lot of money, while we get nothing. They make humongous amounts of money using our material, our life stories, and we get nothing in return. That's the most benign form of it. Two, some very malevolent and evil things that happen with information that is freely given on the internet. Now, we are happy doing it. And the people who are using this information for their own nefarious, reasons are happy using it. Right? This is the most benign thing and the most common thing. And we get our children addicted to it from, literally from the time they open their eyes. And we have all kinds of excuses, and all kinds of reasons why we do it. Oh, it keeps the child occupied. Otherwise, the child is a nuisance. Otherwise, the child makes a lot of noise. If I didn't do this, what would I do? A simple question is, what did your mother do? What did your grandmother do? Before the social media, they came into the picture. Right? Children were still there. Right? They were still having babies. How did they keep them occupied? Think about this. You know, I remember, and I don't have to go back always into my childhood. I'm saying it right now. If you go into the villages, for example, in India, you will see this anywhere. You have a little kid. All he has is a shoebox, or the equivalent of a shoebox. Something like a shoebox. And he has, he has, he has, he has, he has, he has, some bottle caps, small or big bottle caps. And he has a string. Now this child, first of all, he accesses all of these materials. And then he creates a wheeled vehicle. So he makes axles, he fixes those bottle caps as wheels to that box that he has, the shoe box or its equivalent. He ties the string and then he puts something in it and he drags it around and he calls it his car, he calls it his bus, he calls it his train, he calls it whatever he wants to call it. And in the whole process he is learning to be dexterous, he is learning to use his intelligence, his reasoning powers, he is learning to create something. That thing which he creates is successful part of the time, sometimes it fails. And each time it is successful or fails, he is learning some other lesson. And he is having a hell of a lot of fun. He is having great fun doing all this. And most of the time he is doing this outside. He is getting some sunlight, he is getting some vitamin D, he is breathing fresh air hopefully depending on which place he is living in. All of this is happening. Even in America, I remember seeing exactly this happening in an Amish village in Pennsylvania. There was a little five year old who was selling horseshoes. He was sitting there with a little shop and selling horseshoes. I went to him and I said, how much was the horseshoe? He said, three dollars. So these were all, he had painted them silver. Little fellow, barefoot. So I said, well, do you have one which is not painted? I want the actual original horseshoe without the paint. He said, I will get it for you in a minute. He got up, he ran all the way to inside the house. Barefoot. And he came back with this unpainted horseshoe. So I paid him three dollars. I said, thank you so much. And then I was chatting with him. I said, so how's business? He said, oh, business is good. I said, you have this shop alone? Is it or do you have partners? He says, oh, I have a partner. I said, who is your partner? He points to his little three year old brother who was doing exactly what I just described. He had this shoe box and, you know, bottle caps or something. He said, oh, this is my brother. I said, okay, that's good. Since he always made it. I said, okay, this is my brother. I said, okay, this is my brother. He came back. He reached the front ат the door. He has made a little cart. He girls in this cart, he just makes a little cart you get your water into. He bringin his s cabo De Dea almost like감 inflicade arround. The direction is very different. He up there, he bag on whatever, something best possible in the right to to purchase berries. He always tries and makes the best out of and he think he is cherished, you know, He likes his work. So he takes care of that. He throws some grain there. Those chickens are his friends. He's learning to build relationships. And if you think that building relationships with chickens is a waste of time, believe me. I am a consultant. I teach people leadership, among other things. And a lot of those lessons, I learned training dogs and horses. You'll be surprised how much you can learn from animals. As a matter of fact, how much you can learn from anything, any situation in life, if you know how to learn. If you have this delusional confidence that you can learn anything, it's very difficult to do badly in life. And all this comes because you ask a simple question. What is it that makes you happy? So it's not a question of, I'm not promoting sadness or I'm not promoting unhappiness. I'm saying, ask what is it that makes me happy? Don't say it's enough to be happy. You know, it's enough to be happy doing the right things. And Allah SWT kept happiness in giving. Allah SWT kept happiness in spreading goodness around you. Allah SWT kept happiness in seeing. Seeing the smiles, in making people smile. Seeing the smiles on people's faces. Allah SWT did not keep happiness in greed, in accumulation of material stuff, in chasing this or that worldly dream. Allah SWT kept happiness in wiping the tears off somebody else's eyes. Allah SWT kept happiness in standing up against oppression. So ask, ask yourself, what is it that makes me happy? Because people, as I mentioned right in the beginning, people are happy doing some very negative things. And if that's what's keeping you happy, then there's a serious problem with that. So what is it that makes me happy? And the short answer is that happiness is not what you take from somewhere. Happiness is what you, the more you give, the more you give, the happier you will be. Whether it's giving time, or energy, or helping people, or giving money, or... You want happiness? Go, look for it in hospitals. Go to a hospital and pay the bills of people who cannot pay their bills. There are lots of people like that. Lots of people who can't sleep in the night because someone near to them a child, a parent or sibling, whoever, is ill, they are in hospital, they have to be in hospital. And these people who are there, they don't know how to pay the bill. There is nothing that will help them. Go pay their bills. See how tremendously happy you will be. Go to a grocery store. Pay the bills of those who cannot pay their bills. Find people who don't even go into the grocery store. Because they know they can't pay the bills. So what's the point of going into the grocery store? But they need to eat. Go take care of them. We have people who are tremendously happy. I mean, I live in a city where literally if you want to, you know, if you attend every wedding you get invited to, you don't need to cook food in your house. Take a drive in the city two o'clock in the night, three o'clock in the morning, and you will see all the wedding function halls filled with people. Is that a good way of living? Imagine the colossal amount of money. And this is, I'm talking about humongous figures. Colossal amount of money that is spent in ostentation. We're trying to show off, we're trying to, you know, look better than the last one. Knowing full well that the next person is going to look better than you. You know,