Gentle Teaching
Happiness
Quality of life
Every human being wants to be happy and every human being has the right to be happy. It’s a simple but true statement. Happiness is the energy of almost all our behavior. We do things to become happy or to avoid situations which make us feel unhappy. Or we do things as an expression of our feeling of happiness or unhappiness. Only a small part of our behaviors have nothing directly to do with happiness. These are more ritual behaviors or behaviors driven by psychiatric disorders.
In daily life we speak of happiness. In more professional terms we speak of ‘quality of life’ (QOL).
Also in gentle teaching quality of life is an important issue. First we focus on establishing the relationship called ‘companionship’, but then we go further to help the special friend to develop all his qualities on all aspects of life.
There are many approaches on quality of life. Most of them are related to external circumstances which may influence the feeling of a person about his quality of life. In gentle teaching, feelings are more important that objective circumstances. A hundred people may observe me during my interaction with a special friend and all conclude that I am gentle and helpful towards the other. But if the special friend feels I am domineering him, my actions won’t make him happy. And that is what matters.
So within the perspective of gentle teaching the only thing that matters is how the person feels. That makes quality of life a very individual experience. To create a workable model, we have been looking for more general aspects underlying the individual desires, needs and experiences. By questioning why people are doing what they are doing, we ended up with eight basic values which are the underlying values of quality of life or happiness.
You can download the complete article on happiness