03 Feb Do I Really Want to be Happy?
The first statement that I would like to make is that it is not sermonizing and neither a panacea for the busy people all around, as there are millions of paragraphs written on it. It is a brush with surrealist state that all of us reach, sometime or other.
If we ask someone, “Do you really want to be happy?” we are likely to find an initial confused reaction followed by a counter question of, “Who on earth, doesn’t want to be happy?”
It is true that all the hullabaloo of our lives is in pursuit of happiness, but does anyone try to find what happiness is? Everyone is so busy seeking happiness that they have no time to stop and ask what it is. For most people happiness is a cherished state of mind which is there, far-away, like the horizon – a vague, nebulous feeling that everybody takes for granted and nobody gets a grip on.
Imagine we are able to suddenly ask people on the move: “What makes you happy?”. The off-the-cuff answers could range from a ‘cup of coffee to a ‘hot shower’, or from ‘sex’ to ‘self-awareness’. All these are pointers that happiness is a fleeting feeling which can be aroused by any outside agent, some kind of ‘high’. This is exactly why happiness is so elusive: everybody chases it and possibly very few find it.
We think happiness is outside, in the other – someone or something is going to give it to us as a gift or maybe we spend some effort to earn it ourselves. There appears to be a kind of unhappiness about the degree of happiness everyone has because we fail to recognize that happiness cannot be brought about directly. It has a feminine form that needs indirect and gentle cajoling.
But remember happiness comes as a shadow of positive energy; it is a fragrance. We can weed out the dark emotions like anger, hatred, anxiety, envy and then the energy entangled in these dark corners is released and transformed into a flower of contentment. Happiness is the aroma of such flowering.
Happiness has many shades: joy, bliss, contentment, pleasure, satisfaction, felicity…but they are all colorful petals of the same flower. Before seeking happiness one might pause and ponder for a moment to ask oneself, “Do I really want to be happy? Am I ready to fulfill the condition in which happiness can be born?”
When we are conscious of all the negative energies that block the flow of happiness, to take the trouble to remove the causes that makes us unhappy. If I am looking for appreciation in others’ eyes, I am hiding my loneliness in the crowd. If I am not ready to encounter my sadness and depression, I am missing the art of enjoying every moment of living.
If ready, I can pause in my fast-paced gallop, take a deep breath and forget about happiness.
Possibly with a warm tea cup in my hand I’d begin to enjoy the shadows of the tall trees – watching a butterfly flirting with the lily in full bloom or the lush green leaves dancing in the breeze to the piercing notes of a cuckoo,
As the bubbles of joy start rising in my heart, slowly the tickling all over, I might wonder: ‘Is this happiness? And I lose myself’.