The secret to happiness made simple

Is there a secret to happiness? And if there is, what does it cost?

We singles struggle through life, convinced that happiness is out there somewhere, if we can only find it. So most of us jump into a frenzied search, believing we can acquire, buy, or do happiness.

More often than not, all we find is frustration.

"Can't get no satisfaction"

The secret to happiness is not a blissful state in which we have no problems at all. You won't find that in this life. You know by now that if you ever achieve that kind of situation, it doesn't last very long.

No, we're searching for a deep, peaceful, reassuring kind of happiness, closer to contentment than anything else. Trying to work your way into that seldom happens. It must be something different.

Maybe our standards are too high. Maybe we, as singles, expect too much. We may be after something that's too perfect to even exist.

Is the secret to happiness in stuff?

Gone the stuff route yet? I have. Let me give you a quick rundown of how it works.

You're dissatisfied. You think something's missing in your life. Then you see a commercial or an ad. The product promises to make your life better. It's so convincing that you think, "Yeah, that sounds logical. If I just had that, then I'd be happy."

So you buy it, the gift lift lasts for a while, then inevitably fizzles out. It happens every time, with every thing. Then you're bummed until the next ad comes along.

Many singles get on this materialism treadmill and can't get off. But that's not the secret to happiness either.

Is the secret to happiness in relationships?

Relationships are another path, and sometimes they funnel down to a single relationship and you get married. Then you're happy.

Oops. Just kidding.

Marriage alone doesn't guarantee happiness, as we can see from the divorce rate. Certainly relationships are a component of happiness, and you can't be genuinely happy without them (cloistered nuns and hermit monks aside). But again, people change, you change, people die, move away, or we discover that no matter how nice they are, they can't satisfy our deepest longing.

Finally, the secret to happiness

By the process of elimination, we come down to what brings soul-deep satisfaction, contentment, joy, peace, and a sense of value: an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

"Yipes!" you say, "Anything but that! Not him again."

If that's how you react at the mention of Jesus' name, then my guess is that you're also not truly happy. The fact that you have read this far is another clue.

The truth is that we either face Jesus now or face him later, after we die. He is not bitter medicine. He is the secret to happiness, but if you don't believe me, good luck in finding it somewhere else. I know. I tried.

Let's be honest. Reading through the Ten Commandments will prove to you that you're a sinner. If you get this kind of sick feeling in your stomach, that's good. If you don't, you still don't understand.

My promise to tell the truth

Look, when I launched www.inspiration-for-singles.com in 2005, I had two choices. I could either make it a secular, New Age site, or I could make it a Christian site. The first choice would have stone guaranteed me scads of visitors and tons of cash. But I would have had to lie to you to do that.

I chose to tell you the truth, as I have experienced it in my nearly 40 years as a single person.

Right now, I expect you're in that same trial-and-error process I went through looking for happiness. The sooner you try Jesus, the sooner you'll discover the secret--the real secret. If you've always considered Christians as sort of naive and well, prudes, that's not us at all.

Explore www.inspiration-for-singles.com. Or if you're open-minded enough to try Jesus now, here's how.

Take it or leave it, this is what I believe, with all my heart, is the true secret to happiness. I sincerely hope you'll take it.

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