Happiness: 10th 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
