At the beginning and end of the day, we all want to be happy;
but ask yourself honestly, and you shall discover, you don’t have the final
answer as yet (or, may be you already have!). From birth till death, in the life
of a person, this aspect keeps on recurring, without a final resolution. The truth is; complete happiness is perhaps
attainable only in a state of either complete attachment or detachment from the
externals, and internal interplays; encountered in and during the course of our
conscious transactions as a being. However, it is a desirable, near-attainable
but is asocial and hence; utopian. Personally though, one can have it to varied
degrees through efforts.
The feeling of happiness is relative to what we want and what
we get, constrained by the environment, situations, events and the measure of
our willingness to find it. The infinite layers of happiness that we wear, are
our becoming and own making, to a great extent. This is an individualistic phenomenon
without any finality or limit about it. Each one of us is different from the
other, in terms of its realization and how happy we are in the process. Happiness
is also dependent on our own psychosomatic makeup and is cultivable. It is a
crude and finer aspect of our life. When added up, happiness could be a
collective existential phenomena.
For earning happiness, the easiest way, is to seek pleasure
and we are programmed for that. Go for the pleasures and maximize them, in your
pursuits of happiness; knowing fully well that soon, your pleasures would turn
into your pains as well. Pleasure, at the rudimentary or crude levels, only can
make you happy but, soon you will discover that as a happy person, you need
more of it. Well, that is your rights and you should happy and full in life.
At
times, the conditions of pleasures remain no more valid,
if you have outgrown yourselves. Pleasures are satiable commodities and
require
constant replenishment. You have to shift your stance constantly to have
more
or newer kinds of pleasures to remain happy, though not at the cost of
others
and your own welfare. As derivatives, these pleasures could generate
lots of
derivatives, to demotivate you or make you enter the piers of pains and
suffering. Many of us make the habits of living in the slices of these
pains to
become happy or making our loved ones happy. Such actions take us to
degeneration and destruction, if we fail to rescue ourselves before it
is too
late. However, we can avoid the pains and tribulations encountered
directly or
as the byproducts of pleasures sought, by seeking much and following
myriad
paths. We too can feel containment, when it is based on selfless action.
A
way-out from this labyrinth is to tread in the middle of the highroads
of
pleasure and pain, by having both and by remaining near satisfied with
the
existing situations or not by expanding the scope further and farther.
It is
not complete inertia but the acceptance of the inevitability and
limitation.
Basically, there are three main types of happy persons:
THE ORDINARY PERSON
The very ordinary and most common person fits into this
category, who often spends life as an anonymous and faceless entity. Such a
person does not claim or proclaim his/her wealth, knowledge, status, fame or
name before others. For them the power, prestige and property factors of
happiness are muted or remain the non-factors of life. Such a happy person do
not also question too much of life and living or compares himself/herself to
get ahead of the others. Accepting the conditions that cannot be changed he/she
adjust the emerging realities. This happy person devotes more time in following
than leading. He/she lives in the tradition by accommodating the roles expected
of. This person is happy by default and detente.
THE SUCCESSFUL PERSON
By walking on the roads of extremities, one can only become
happy for a very short period of time. After reaching plenty many summits, this
happy person finds himself/herself unfulfilled and therefore, turn to other
means to prove his/her importance in the mundane and material world. Here, happiness
is a condition of entrapment and enjoyment; largely perceived as success. This
happy person creates wealth, power and prestige as examples to be emulated by rest
of us. In the ultimate analysis, this happy person is the one, who turns to the
ordinary and successful persons to have a privileged glimpse of happiness at
the end of the day. Days come in his/her life, when he/she discovers that all the
gains are redundant as it cannot fetch tons of happiness any more. He/she, then
sheds the prides and retreats to a space of enforced commonality.
THE EXTRA-ORDINARY PERSON
Far away from the ordinary and successful crowds, we have
another happy person who is the creative thinker. With enormous and diverse
creative and intellectual prowess, he/she tries to define the non-material and
extraordinary notions of success and happiness. His/her prescriptions and
strategies to feel happy are nice but
cannot be translated into realities. This becomes apparent during
his/her heightened life-time or beyond by others. This happy individual
creates the webs
of happiness and then feels trapped. He/she too, dwells in an enclosure
of makeshift
happiness, in abject isolation. Exhausted of happiness, he/she secretly
concludes that, a return to the insignificant ordinary or the
significant
success category is a no-fuss solution.
THE CRUX
As we are happy in our freedoms, wealth and intellects; so
also we can be happy in our bondage, paucity and voids; though, it is better
to combine all of these into a specially tailor-made and livable reality of our
own perception as happiness, not questioned by others, as aberration. However,
happiness is to be sought as a lifelong vocation and shared with others.
Tell me, happiness is never or forever and/or which category
you belong to?