How to live life happily? Most often, I’d get suggestions like: make a contribution by working hard in a work you love; be in the know and intelligent; gather a surplus; love your family above your friends, your cellphone, your dog, your career; and progress in the firm and gain high title and salary, stock options, benefits. Everyone I know agrees: this is life’s joy.

However, happiness is not at all about being paid, or living in luxury, or getting wealthy, or having a blue-collar job and finding a partner. I am more convinced that happiness goes beyond any human reason.

How would you measure happiness? Is it the size of your smile while working on a job you really love? Is it the number of degrees you have attained and the amount of knowledge you have collected? Is the gauge of happiness allied with gathering a surplus, or loving your family and friends, or collecting the latest gadgets or owning pets, stocks, companies and businesses? How is life’s joy measured?

Listening to friends could tender a convincing reason that happiness could go beyond any human reason. Clichés most of the responses may be, such as the line that goes “happiness is not at all about being paid, or living in luxury, or getting wealthy, or having a blue-collar job and finding a partner,” but there are truths to every line that could somehow point to quantifying happiness.

“Each second, the leaves shiver at every passing breeze, a little too afraid that they might shake off from their tight cling. Every day is a decision for them to either stay on top or to let go. Every falling is not dying; it’s a sweet touch of God.”

She said “I love you” and hung up the phone. A little girl ran towards her asking “Is daddy at work?” She nodded and gave the child a tight hug – a profound love that very instant, I saw.

I was glancing at them, a photo-perfect mother-daughter pair under the shade of a pale green tree. Leaves were falling on them and sprinkling her every kiss attempt and the girl’s every giggle of anticipation.