Swapnil_Diwakar_BLP037_Happiness2012

Happiness: 10^th September 2012 : SWAPNIL DIWAKAR BLP-2013

Anil Sir’s class started with a very positive note which had a flavor of “Happiness”.

Happiness is something everyone wants to have. You may be successful and have a lot of money, but without happiness it will be meaningless.

That’s why I’m excited with this month’s Sidbari trip were the theme is “Happiness” or we can say “Finding happiness”.

We will discuss this topic all month long and I’m sure we will learn a lot. But, before we move further, it’s a good idea to get deeper understanding of the word happiness itself.

Understanding what happiness is will give us good ground upon which to build our discussions.

Let me start with an official definition. According to  Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, here is the definition of happiness:

§  a state of well-being and contentment

§  a pleasurable or satisfying experience

Happiness can also be defined as:

“State of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy”

We must realize that for most of the problems, the solutions are often simple and obvious enough if one understands the problem clearly. Even more surprising is the fact that the solutions mostly lie in the problem itself. It is true in the case of happiness too.

Let us consider the above definition carefully. The main keyword in the definition is "want". The whole trouble starts when we want something. Every moment of our lives we keep on wanting something or the other. If we could make a list of all the things we want in our lives since childhood to death, including trivial as well as very important, all the paper in the world perhaps would not be enough for this purpose. Only a small percentage of all our wishes are fulfilled in spite of all our endeavors  The percentage of wishes, which remain unfulfilled, keeps on growing with time. 

As a result, as we grow older, we become more and more unhappy. We grow tired of life. The blessings, which our lives and the whole existence keep showering upon us, gradually lose their charm. The frustration, of failing to fulfill most of our wishes, sets in. We start feeling weighed down. The feeling that the whole life is somehow conspiring to keep us unhappy grows. Life becomes full of miseries. We keep stumbling from one failure to another.

If one does not desire anything, he has no chance of getting unhappy due to failure in fulfilling his desire.

One may argue that a life of no desires will be bereft of pleasures. That it will become colorless and dull. But this premise is not true.

As explained by Anil Sir:

Happiness: Positive Psychology

• 1        Unstated emotional expectation of those who I care about
•                  Untold or unsaid expectation towards friend/relations/wife/parents
• 2        Regret about the past
•                   I did not honor what I should have done before at that point of time.
• 3         Guilt that I carry with me.
•                   No matter how many years have passed I carry guilt in me, not only regret, its tremendous
•                   guilt which I carry

Firstly, we must realize that the world does not and cannot function as per our whims and fancies. We are too insignificant in the scheme of the existence. We can have control only over our desires and not on the factors necessary to fulfill them. During winter, we may desire that the sun shines a bit more in the sky but sun has no obligation to behave as per our desires. We may desire that every other human being around us acts in such a way that his acts do not hurt us at all and only make us happy, but the other person has his own desires and compulsions and he will act accordingly. We may desire that whenever we ask for something we get it, but the person or the force that has the power to grant our wishes may not wish to do so or may not be able to do so because of his or its own compulsions. 

Are we ourselves always willing or able to fulfill the demands of others around us? If not, then how can we hope that our demands must always be fulfilled? In fact if we pause to consider it carefully then it will become obvious that there always is more probability of our desires not getting fulfilled. Then why keep desiring constantly and exposing ourselves to unhappiness?

Secondly, it is a blunder on our part that we consider happiness and pleasure to be the same. They are not same. Pleasure is there all around us for the taking. Since we have become obsessed with our desires we have ceased to notice sources of pleasure and as a consequence fail to grab it when it is available. Pleasure is the essence which we extract from things we have. We may desire to visit the most beautiful sea beach in the world. When we are finally able to make it to that beach we feel happy. This happiness is the consequence of the fulfillment of our desire. But when we look at the waves rushing towards us, at the golden sand spread over a large area, the wind on our faces, the riot of colors in the sky while sun is setting or rising, the feel of sea water on our skin, what we feel is pleasure. To derive pleasure it is not at all necessary to desire. When we pass along the green fields while travelling, we do feel pleasure looking at them though we had not specifically "desired" to see them. When we look at anything beautiful we feel pleasure.

Pleasure is always around us without our asking for it. It is not a consequence of our ambitions and endeavors, it is simply waiting all around for us to pause and pay attention. It is only that we are always so obsessed with our desires and wishes and the struggle to fulfill them that we have forgotten how to pleasure ourselves. Almost all of the time we live inside our minds, either making plans to fulfill our present desires or ruing the desires which could not be fulfilled and in this process miss out all the pleasures lying all around us.

Thirdly, we do derive pleasure when our desires are fulfilled but for every desire fulfilled there are numerous others that remain unfulfilled. We have to consider carefully whether we are not paying too high a price, in terms of all the frustrations we experience as a result of failures, for a few fulfilled desires. If the answer is yes, then the conclusion is obvious.

Actually, happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. They are part of the same package. If one asks for one he leaves him susceptible to the other. The desire for happiness is like asking only for the light and not for darkness. But there is not much difference between light and darkness. It is matter of degree only. We choose and therefore get disappointed. What we should do is only look for the pleasures all around us. Whatever comes our way we should try to extract all the pleasure possible from it.

The root cause of all our unhappiness is DESIRE.

If one can STOP desiring, if one can take life as it comes, then only one can be free of unhappiness.

~Swapnil Diwakar