" IF YOU WANT TO STAY HAPPY THEN YOU HAVE TO KEEP OTHERS HAPPY "
Explanation :
Every individual is surrounded by other individuals/people. All these individuals/people are categorized into 5 circles.
The first or the innermost circle : consists of people who you are coming in contact with the most i.e on a daily basis or very frequently. Examples are your wife/husband, co workers etc.
The second circle : which surrounds the first circle are the people who you meet let us say once or twice a week and are not as frequently in contact with you as the people in the first circle. Examples are some friends you see or visit or people in a class that you are taking once a week etc.
The third circle : surrounds the second circle and consists of individuals who you meet once or twice a year or even once in 5 or any number of years. You know all these people. Examples are distant relatives, old friends etc.
The fourth circle : consists of people you don't know but can meet at any time. Examples are attendant at a grocery store, someone you talk to in an elevator etc.
The fifth circle : Comprises of people you don't know or meet but these people know you. Examples are of fans of rock stars or famous people etc.
Your happiness depends directly, on how happy the individuals are with you, in all these 5 circles.
To achieve 'ABSOLUTE HAPPINESS' all the people in all these 5 circles should be happy with you.
It does not matter how much money/fame or power you have. These things cannot directly affect your happiness. Your happiness will depend on how happy others are with you. If money/power or fame could bring you happiness then we would not see countless cases of suicides, depression etc. among the rich/powerful and famous people. Money and other things can only affect your happiness indirectly. Example is that if your wife and family are not happy with you/or are sad because you are poor then their unhappiness/sadness will affect directly on your happiness.
I would assign different weights to all the circles. The first circle will carry the most weight, the second will carry less weight than the first, the third will carry less weight than the second and so on.
The First or the Innermost circle is of most important. It is very important to have the most people happy in this circle.
It will be very difficult for an individual to be happy if ALL the members of the first circle are not happy, even though the members of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th circle are happy with that individual. There will be some happiness experienced, because of the people of the other circles, but the individual will not be able to stay generally happy even at a basic level.
Similarly if ALL the people of the first circle are happy, and the the people of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th circle are not happy then that individual can still be generally happy at a basic level. There will be unhappiness experienced because of the people in the other circles, but a person can attain general happiness at a basic level just because ALL the members in the first circle are happy with that individual.
Also the level of happiness depends on the number of people in the individual's circles. For example let us say there are two people A and B. A has 2 people in his first circle and B has 10 people in his first circle. Let us assume they have no more people in any other circle. If both the people in A's circle are happy with A, and all the 10 people in B's circle are happy with B, then B will be more happy than A, as more people(8 more) carrying the same weight are happy with B.
Similarly based on the above the more the people the happy in the closer circles to you the more you are happy. Now here is another example in which I will try to measure happiness. Let us say A and B both have 5 people in the first circle and 10 people in the second circle and they do not have any other people in any other circles. Let us assume for arguments sake that the weight of each individual's happiness in the first circle is 75 points, and the weight of each individual's happiness in the second circle is 30 points each. Let us assume that A has 4 people happy in the first circle and no one happy in the second circle. Let us assume that B has 2 people happy in the first circle and 5 people happy in the second circle. So the points of happiness for both A and B will be as follows :
A = 75 x 4 = 300
B = (75 x 2) + (30 x 5) = 150 + 150 = 300
As you can see that A had only 4 people happy, while B had a total of 2+5 = 7 people happy. Still they both have achieved the same happiness points and are both equally happy. The reason is that A has more people in the first circle happy than B has. I hope you get the importance of getting more and more people happier in the inner circles first and then making people happy in the other circles.
Also the unhappiness of any individual with you will affect your happiness no matter what. Even if it is not your fault and some person is not happy with you, then that unhappiness of theirs towards you, will affect your happiness. It will not affect you with the same intensity or same points as it would affect you if it were your fault, but it will affect you at some lower level. Again the intensity will be high if the person is in the first circle and lower in the higher circles.
Try to keep people happy even if it is not your fault, or even if it is their fault, especially in the lower circles. If they cannot be made happy, then stay as far away from them as possible, and in least frequent contact with them as possible.
