 Every person in the world would like to have more happiness in life. Our sages teach us, our rabbis teach, that it's a great mitzvah. It's an important thing for every person to be happy as much as possible. And in our society, throughout Canada, in the United States, in Europe, there have been many books written just over the past few years, many books written about the topic of happiness. And one of the things that has been discovered in almost all of the studies, people, doctors and scholars and professors that study this topic of happiness, one of the things that almost everyone has discovered is that having a spiritual, religious life is a very important ingredient in being able to have a happy life. Having lots of money is not something that necessarily leads people to being happy. And the truth is that often, when people have a lot of money, they're not very happy. There's no direct connection. But there is a direct connection between being a spiritual person and being a happy person. So what I'd like to discuss this morning is how can we all work towards having more happiness in our lives? The truth is that there is a tremendous amount in life, in each of our lives, to be happy about and to be thankful for. If we really think about it, we each have a tremendous amount of blessing in our lives. And one of the greatest problems that gets in our way is that we are often our own worst enemies and we sabotage, we destroy the happiness that we could have by failing to appreciate those blessings. Now to be truly happy in life, we have to be true to ourselves. If we're going to be really happy, we have to be real. We have to be real. We have to be true to our real nature. We have to be true to our real nature. What does this mean? The truth is that every human being is physical. When God created human beings, he created us from the earth, from the dust of the ground. So a part of us is very physical. We like to eat. We like to sleep. We like to do the things that animals do, horses and cats and dogs. We're very physical like everything else on the planet. However, there is another side to us which is not just physical, it is spiritual. Because when God created the first people, the first human being Adam, God breathed the breath of life into that first human being, which is our soul, our nishama. So we have these two parts to who we are, our physical side, our spiritual side. And the truth is that if we only focus on our bodies and ignore our souls, we're not really living as human beings and we will never be truly happy. You can't be truly happy if you're not being who you are. And so the important part to remember is we are not just physical, we are physical and spiritual. Now Judaism teaches that we are in this world to grow. That we were put into this world in order to grow. Which means to work on ourselves, to work on our medot, our character traits, which means what? It means when we go through life, trying to be people who are more sensitive to others, trying to be people who are more generous, trying to be people who are more calm, trying to be people who overcome our tendencies to be jealous or to be impatient or to get angry. These are all parts of our personality and we were put into this world to work on them, to develop them, to grow, becoming better people and working on our characters can bring us tremendous pleasure. It's like building anything. If you see a child that takes some blocks and they build a fort or a castle, they enjoy building. We as human beings, we are not happy when we're doing nothing in life if we're wasting our time. But if we build something, if we create something, we feel great. An artist who paints a beautiful picture, steps back and looks at it and feels wonderful. Look what I accomplished. So each one of us is an artist. Each one of us is an architect. Each one of us is a builder and we're building something that can be beautiful and magnificent and wonderful. What are we building? We're building a human being. When God created us, God said, let us make man. God said, let us make man. Who was God speaking to? God was speaking to you and me. God was speaking to every human being and God was saying, I cannot make you. God made every other thing by just saying, let there be trees, let there be animals, let there be fish. God can make everything. But God is saying, I cannot make a human being. God says, I can give you your body and your soul. I can give you the raw ingredients, but only you can make you. So that's why God says, let us make man. We become partners with God and we have the ability to create a masterpiece. And if we do that, if we are able to step back and look at our lives and say, you know what, last year I was someone that got angry very easily. And this year I worked on myself and now I'm much more calm. I feel wonderful. I feel very, very happy. So this is one of the ways that we're able to become happy by growing ourselves and becoming bigger people. And that's why in Hebrew the word for growth is related to the word for happiness. The word for growth is sameach and the word for happiness is sameach. So the Hebrew words for growth and happiness are really pretty much the same. When we grow, we become happy. Another teaching of the Torah about how we can achieve the greatest pleasure possible is to connect ourselves to the greatest thing in existence, to connect ourselves to the greatest reality in existence, to connect ourselves to the source of everything that exists. And that is Hashem himself, God himself. If we get close to Hashem, if we get close to God, there is no greater joy that's possible. When we think about it, our world is filled with beauty. We go out in a beautiful sunset. We can see the beautiful sunrise. We can see the stars. We can see forests and lakes and oceans. There's so much beauty in this world. And this world contains so many treasures and so much pleasure. You can find a delicious fruit and eat it and say, oh, this is wonderful. And the truth is that we have the ability to have a relationship with the creator of all the beauty and pleasure in this world. When I was a teenager, so like any other teenager, I loved to nash on cookies and cake. So I got a job when I was in high school at a factory that produced cookies and cake. It was amazing. This is not just buying some cookies in a supermarket where they were sitting on the shelf for half a year. I was able to eat the cookies right off the assembly line. They were so fresh and they were hot and they were delicious. The closer you get to the source of things, the closer you get to where it comes from, the better it is, the more delicious it is, the more pleasure there is. The same thing that we live in this world and the closer we get to the source of everything in the world, we can have the greatest pleasure. People today will line up. They'll stand in line for hours to get the autograph of some famous baseball player. But God is close to every single person that calls to him. The Torah says that God is near to everyone who calls to him. Try to get a personal appointment with the Prime Minister of Canada. Try and arrange a meeting with the President of the United States. Try to get to see them. It will be almost impossible. Almost impossible. Or it may take you a year or two years. And maybe you'll get to spend three minutes with the Prime Minister. Maybe if you're lucky. But we can speak directly to God whenever we want. And God listens to us. And God actually knows each one of us and knows our name and cares about us and loves us. If you can appreciate your closeness to Hashem, your closeness to God, you will have everything. Of course, life is often very difficult. Life is often not so easy. And one of the ways to maintain a positive attitude is to have trust in God. A great rabbi was once imprisoned in a horrible prison, a horrible, horrible prison for many years. And he explained how he was able to survive this terrible experience of being in prison. He said that he once saw the most amazing thing. He saw a man that stretched a steel wire between two tall buildings. And he climbed up and he walked across this wire. Very, very dangerous, very amazing. And many people were looking up and they were watching. This is incredible. Look at what this man is doing. The next day he climbed up to this wire again. But this time, when there was a big crowd down below looking at him, he said, before I start to walk across the wire today, I'm going to tell you I'm doing something even more difficult. I'm going to take a wagon and I'm going to put the wagon behind me. And I'm going to drag the wagon behind me on the wire. Everyone is amazed. But then he says, is anyone willing to get into the wagon? So a young boy steps up and says, I will get into the wagon. And the man walks across this steel wire between these two buildings very high up. And he gets all the way across. And the people down below, they can't believe what happened. And when the man and the young boy come down, everyone crowded around the young boy and said, why were you willing to get into that wagon? Who are you? So the young boy said, that man is my father. And I know that he would never put me in a situation where I would be in danger. I trusted him. But then everyone came over to this man and said, how were you able to walk across this wire, this dangerous wire, with your son dragging behind you in the wagon? How did you do that? So he said, I'm going to tell you the secret of how I was able to do it. When I walk across that wire, he said, nothing in the world exists for me. For me, nothing exists except the next step I'm going to take. There isn't even a wire. He said, if I was to look down, or if I was to look ahead to see how far it is to get to the building, he says, I would lose my balance and I would fall. The only way I was able to make it is I only thought about taking the next step. And the rabbi explained, that's lesson that he learned from this man is what allowed him to exist and not just exist, but to survive in a healthy way all of those years in that prison, that terrible, terrible prison. He said, I didn't worry about the past. I didn't worry about the future. I didn't worry about how long I'm going to have to be in this prison. He said, all I thought about was, what does God want from me right at this moment? I just thought about this moment and about being with God and the fact that God was with me and I was never overwhelmed. I never felt terrible. I never felt sad. Another very, very powerful tool for happiness is learning to be thankful for those things in life that we have and not to focus on those things that we don't have. Our rabbis teach that the happy person, the person that's really wealthy, is the person who is happy with what they have. If you are happy with whatever you have, you are a happy person. It doesn't make a difference how much you have. And that's why, what is the holiday in the Torah? What is our holiday? That's the happiest holiday? The time of our happiness? It's the holiday of Sukkot. What do we do? We don't stay in a beautiful house with beautiful things and fancy things and expensive things. We build a little hut. A little hut we build in the back of our house. Very, very simple. And we sit there for a week. And we have the simplest things in life. But we realize that we have everything. We have everything. Even though it's not much. So when we get up in the morning, we say, I thank you God for the fact that I'm alive. The first thing we do is we say thank you God. I'm alive. I appreciate this. If we can't appreciate being alive, we'll never be happy. God created human beings similar to God. God is intelligent. Human beings have intelligence. God has free will. Human beings have free will. As I mentioned before, God created the world. But we are creators. We create ourselves. We can be very similar to God. God asks us that just as he is holy, we should be holy. We have that ability. We have the ability to be like God. One of the ways we can do this is God is a giver. God is a giver. God is not a taker. When we think about God, God is always giving. People will tell you, people that are happy people will tell you that one of the things that brings them the most pleasure and most happiness in the world is when they are giving to others. When they are helping others, it makes them incredibly happy and fulfilled. It doesn't have to be a lot. You are just smiling at someone. When I go to the supermarket here and you see the people that are behind the counter and you pay them for your food or whatever you are buying, they stand there for hours each day and no one is nice to them. They always seem to be so unhappy. If you walk up to them with your groceries and you just give them a big smile, a friendly smile, you can see on their faces. They look happy. You just made someone happy. It didn't cost you anything. It was very easy. So just smiling at people and being friendly and saying hello and complimenting people. Thank you for the job that you have done. You did a great job. Helping people, making other people feel good, makes us feel good. When we stop being concerned only about ourselves, when we stop being selfish and we try to give to others, it will make our lives happy and joyous. There was a great rabbi who received a letter from someone who was complaining about how they were not happy in their life. And the person was saying that I am not happy and I don't feel that my wife really respects me and I don't think that my children really care about me that much and I don't feel that my boss at work is really respecting me and this person went on and on and on complaining to this great rabbi and he said, why can't I have a life that's happier? And all the rabbi did was take out a red pen and he circled each time on this letter the person wrote the word I. I. I. I. I. I. The person, the rabbi was trying to say only thought about himself. It was only me, me, me, me and such a person will never be happy. We can become bigger people by giving to others and becoming bigger people will certainly make us much happier people. It feels great. It feels good to give. I want to thank you very much and I hope everyone has a much, much happier life.