Happiness

Happiness is, was and will always continue to be a very relative and strangely misunderstood term. The search for happiness or atleast to find an answer to the question as to what happiness really means is never ending. People often lose sight of themselves in the pursuit of this so called relative happiness. People change in this pursuit. Why? Why are people, people like me and you really clueless about the true meaning of happiness? The bottom line is… do we really know what makes us happy? Are we really the true masters of what makes us happy?

I asked a few people, a few friends actually what happiness meant to them. If they really could define happiness. I got a couple of interesting and really thoughtful answers. A good friend of mine defined happiness most beautifully. If there ever could be a way to describe it, this would fit perfectly. "Happiness is a feeling, something that you experience when your needs are fulfilled". I went like "Wow". I was stumped. That was a pretty good insight of things. Being the kind of person I am, I got more curious and I decided to probe.

I ask him "So are you telling me that materialistic things make you happy?"

Pat comes the reply "No".

"But doesnt that just contradict what you just told me?" , I question further.

"Not necessarily" he says to me " You can also be happy if you are able to quench your thirst when you are relieve. You could be happy when you think of an old memory, of someone or something right"

"Hmmm". I wonder. And the conversation ends there.

That got me wondering. Can a memory of someone or something really trigger off a feeling of happiness? I tried to think of something, a memory that triggered a feeling of happiness in me. Luckily (??) I found that I had plenty to choose from. My first job, completing a tough photofeature on time (whew that was a task altogether), writing about things that really matter (sometimes that don't) were all memories that triggered happiness or in plain simple terms made me feel good. Next, I thought of the people that made me happy. Once again, I had a handful of them picked out - the ones that brought a smile to my face when I thought of them or the times that I spent with them.

At the end of this I realised something. There were plenty of happy memories, plenty of people who made me happy; but there hasn't been a single day of my life where I can look back and say: "Wow! What a great day!!" Something or the other has to invariably go wrong with it.

It was almost as if it were a crime to be happy all the time!! Alright. 24 hours.

This realization hit me like a stone in the face. Was my life this sad? In the 22 odd years I have lived, I have just 22 people or 22 memories to pick from? What kind of a sad life did I live anyway? Was I really that hopeless.

Then came another realisation (yes there was another :P)

My happiness would have been confined to 22 memories or 22 people, but it has been these 22 memories and these 22 people that have shown me the true meaning of what it is like to feel loved and wanted. What it is like to be happy. What it is like to be me.

Happily signing off!!!

P.S: First post of the year comes a shameful 4 months after it has begun. Must resolve to write more often.