Happiness is like a bird. The more you run after its pursuit; the more it keeps eluding you by hopping from branch to branch & finally flies away, out of reach, into the oblivion. Yet we all want to be happy in life. Some get the happiness they so fondly want; but some miss the bus for ever & make their lives miserable. Like love, happiness has different definitions & holds different meanings for different people. There is no universal definition for it.
To some happiness means affluence, power & social standing. Some feel happy when they achieve something or get their heart’s desire. Some feel happy after having a sumptuous meal; while some others become happy when they are in the midst of like minded friends. Listening to a soulful tune or reading a good novel makes some people happy. It means that everybody has his own way of feeling happy. The problem with this sort of happiness is that it is short lived & one ceases to feel happy as soon as he is removed from the means of his happiness.
So can’t there be anything like unperturbed & perennial happiness, the bliss, in search of which our ancient sages & ‘rishis’ spent their whole life & were able to achieve it through years of penance & meditation? But we are not living in that period, when there was no constraint of time or when they do not have to spend sleepless nights thinking & planning for the next day. We are living in an age, where we have to take every step cautiously & fight with ourselves as well as with the forces that are always in the look out for keeping us out of the race. Even in this scenario, our quest of happiness makes us to try different avenues, in the hope that one or the other may lead us to get the happiness we want. We try to be rich thinking that once we become rich, we will be happy. We become successful in our efforts & get affluence. But in stead of giving us our much desired happiness, it enhances our thirst for more & more riches, which ends in amassing unaccountable riches but not getting an iota of happiness. Rather by that time so many diseases might have come with it as a bonus.
Then how can we be really happy? It is said that he is the happiest man who thinks the most interesting thoughts & one can think interesting thoughts only when he can train himself to come out of the humdrum of monotonous thoughts which revolves around creature comfort. But thinking creative thoughts is a disciplinary process. For it one has to read, study & converse on current events, politics, science, philosophy and has to escape from dull self-centeredness. His participatory awareness of life in its infinite vitality will tend to produce the excitement which is inherent in happiness. A man can experience it when he stops thinking about his own happiness & say to himself that he does not want to get that happiness for which others might have to suffer & be unhappy. One has to transform himself by renewing his mind.
The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue. It should not be dependent upon things but should be a part of one’s personality. The art living rightly is like all arts. It must be learnt & practiced with utmost care. We have to remember that, in the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”.
Thank you.
New Delhi.
10.03.2011.
