In search of happiness

 

This is not the usual short story. Your thoughts on what constitutes happiness are welcome in comments section.

When I dropped by one afternoon, I saw my cousin happily reclined on a sofa before a wide TV with one arm around his wife and enjoying a serial. He had a nice and commodious flat and a lucrative job with his charming wife also earning as much. They looked a perfect picture of contentment and happiness. After the initial pleasantries, I asked him how things were on his side. His wife had gone inside to make some tea. He pulled a long face and said that he wished God had been kind to him. It was five years since he was married and his wife wanted a baby very much. This set me thinking happiness is not in good earnings or an attractive wife or in owning a posh house or enjoying the comforts of life. It is something more. It varied from individual to individual. I had no solution to offer except the pious hope that God would open His eyes soon.

I asked our maid servant the next  day when she was crying, what was it that made her cry and what would make her happy and free from all worries. I was expecting her to tell me about a big increase in her salary, a one room tenement with a toilet inside the place and with an exclusive water tap or some such mundane things. Instead she said these things though would make her life comfortable did not matter and that she would be happiest if her husband returned from work daily without taking alcohol and talked to her affectionately instead of beating her for no plausible reason in an inebriated condition. A simple wish and legitimate expectation were denied to her.

My elderly neighbour, a kindly and timid soul, was being tortured day in and day out  mentally by a shrew and termagant for wife. She broke his confidence and made him a diffident blundering nervous wreck. The irony is he held a high official position with big responsibilities in government before  his retirement and was regarded well in his large  circle. He was one day confiding to me that he would be happiest if God were to give him deliverance from her by taking him away from this world and that he did not have the guts to take his life on his own.

What is then happiness? Will ten crores of  rupees give one permanent joy? Are the sportsmen or actors   from humble circumstances who earn mind boggling amounts even before they are in their thirties and wallowing in wealth satisfied with their lot?

Are material comforts equated to happiness? Possibly none of them. Is the quest for happiness always successful when one does not know what constitutes happiness? Happiness, it is said, is just an emotion like anger, sorrow or depression. It keeps changing from time to time. A small child is happy with a new toy for a few minutes. It soon gets tired of it, throws it away and starts crying for something else. Adults too are no different, only the toys differ. Happiness is like a mirage always within your sight but never realized permanently.

Happiness again is not related to the character of the individuals. We see wicked men seemingly happy and good men passing though pangs of pain and suffering. I have no explanation for this strange fact except trusting in the law of karma.

Spiritual people talk of a different kind happiness that one would get if only they  knew the real purpose of the human  life  just like what the realized souls enjoyed when they realized who they really were, when they merged with the Supreme even while being alive in this mundane world. Such  countless siddha purushas  have lived in the past and many unknowns are still  living  and walking invisibly among us.   

For common people like many of us, I think instead of looking for happiness, we should look for contentment. It does not mean we should not attempt to improve our lives. While making an honest endeavour, we should learn to be content with what we have and not be obsessed with the distant rainbow only to lose the present peace of mind. Real happiness would appear as being satisfied with the results of our efforts without craving for more.

 Happiness is a state of mind to be cultivated where one would be thankful to the god for his blessings and accepting the difficulties with equanimity wherever it is not possible to remove them. Otherwise how would you explain the restlessness of the very rich to acquire more and more while  contentment on the day’s small earnings is writ large on the face of a cobbler under a shaded tree? Happiness is not elsewhere. It is within one’s mind.

A sage found a man on hands and knees. He asked him what he was searching for. The man said he was searching for his keys. So, the sage got on his knees to search. After a while the sage asked whether he was sure he lost it here. The man replied that he lost it at home. When asked why he was searching here, he replied he was searching because there was lot more light here. The lesson in this story is for us to search for happiness where it belongs and not elsewhere.