Source of happiness

If I try to trace my life years till now, it is basically to find happiness and know its source. As kids, we tried to find happiness in the care and admiration of our parents. We outgrew that phase. Then after we joined school, we found happiness in scoring marks. It made our parents happy, but importantly it made us feel happy. It could be any competition or sport; basically we tried to find happiness. Then getting good grades and a job offer made us happy in our colleges. Then the pay-raise and promotion made us happy in our job. Then it our new car, own house and spouse. The goal posts kept shifting.

The struggle consciously or unconsciously was to find the source of happiness. As the sources of happiness kept changing we tried to find LCM of these sources to make happiness our constant companion. We waited for our eureka moment. And we wanted to finally crack the case once for all and remain happy for ever.

We tried whipping these sources and our imagined sources for more and more happiness and we got nothing. This led to disappointment and we whipped harder and were even more disappointed. We pushed ourselves to the brink of collapse.

But with all these sources, it was one entity that was constant and may be that is the LCM that we searched. The entity is 'I'. It was me that was always there when these sources "emitted" happiness for me. So perhaps I am the source of my happiness. Perhaps the sources never emitted happiness, but I did it for myself. Are we searching for it in places it was never there?

Friends

Friendship day has already passed and I am a bit late with this blog. But, better late than never. There is hardly anything left untold about the value of friendship and friends in our life. But let me make ourselves aware of 2-3 aspects.

In the domain of spiritualism, selflessness is held Supreme. It is called the tunnel that leads us to the Ultimate Truth. Friendship epitomizes selflessness in the simplest way. In a way we can notice and practice every day even unconsciously. One need not have to master tomes on spiritualism to have friends after all. But my definition of "friend" is the classic old book definition and not the hundreds and thousands we have on our social networking sites.

Human being is a social animal and he is bound to have relations. All relationships, save friendship, come with bonds- some small and other big. Mother, father, sister, brother, in-laws, husband, wife, son, daughter, boss... all come with bonds. There is a set of basic duties that one has to deliver to all these relationships. They are tagged responsibilities and duties. I don't mean that these duties are carried out half-heartedly by all of us. We deliver these whole-heartedly and pleasantly, but still they are our duties.

But friendship probably is the only relationship that we get to choose and hence there is no bond here. Spending time with your friend, having a hearty laugh with him are not duties. You do these selflessly. You don't get any material benefits by being with our friends. But it all feeds to our souls' wellbeing. Lord Krishna too calls Sakhya Bhakti as His best form of worship (treating God as our friend).

Dedicated to all my loving friends.

FB

Early this week, I read an article in a daily (yes, there are people who still read news in print). It was authored by an elderly gentleman who wrote about his experience using Facebook. He made the usual points of how he met his long forgotten nephews and nieces and also how it was eating into his time.

But the point that attracted my attention was how he usually ended up having negative emotions at the end of each session. He said he felt less important, less happy and less successful. Even this comment is trite, but I liked the simplicity with which he had narrated. The point, he continued, that was missed was that we compare people’s fb activity with our actual life. Look how happy my friend is with his wife; look at that broad grin and those tight hugs and then see here what a mess my wife has made of my life. Look how my cousin is in a high paying job- new car and all those jungle resort photos and then this miserable life over here, working over weekends for peanuts. Just enough to put you down for the whole day.

But if we look a little deeper, we will realize that what appears in fb is how they want others to see them and not how it is actually going for them. Don’t we do similar things? If we were to listen to the stories behind those smiles and hugs, you would not trade a minute of your life for their year. If we count our blessings, life as is, is just perfect. Every person has his highs and his lows and it is grave injustice if we compare other’s highs with our lows without also comparing the remainder combination.

How can we rate our quality of life with the number of ‘likes’ and the type of ‘comments’ we receive? Life existed just as fine even before fb and it will exist just fine even after it.

A Cyclist

Getting to write to you after a long time. Was stuck in depths of personal matters. Now things have lightened up.

Yes, bought a cycle last week for commuting to office and also for other errands. I am riding the cycle daily to my office. I am riding a cycle after I rode it last when I was in PUC 2.

The experience so far has been beautiful; though for the first 2 days, my thighs and arms squealed. Cycling is pure joy. As my new house is 10 kms from my office- tailor made for cycle travel, I decided to go that route.

There are encouraging signs all over for me to continue paddling. First being, time! Yes. It takes 1 hr 20 mins by bus to reach office and by motorcycle it takes around 40 mins and the cycle gets me there in 45 mins flat. Second, money. No explanations needed, right? Third, fitness. Fourth, mood. My mood remains upbeat most part of the day and that reflects in my personal and professional life. I also get to spend more time with my family, an added advantage. Add to that the advantages of no parking hazzles and minimal traffic delays... that makes for a great transport means.

Another important benefit is the fair MY TIME that it gives- that small time you want to spend with yourself.

While buying the cycle, there was a thought that Bangalore roads are not ideal for cycling... to an extent they are not, but not strong enough to discourage one to take up cycling.

I am planning for short getaways in and out side of Bangalore on weekends. Let's see how it all goes.

"Smile, you idiot..."

"Truth alone triumphs”, goes an old saying. In this hustle-bustle of life, where creating untrue images for self is a norm than exception, do we at least be true to ourselves? If we are true, we don't need to remember anything. Most of our mental stress and pressure is due to dealing with our false self.

The title of this blog is the line that was said to me on my wedding day. "You'll look well in photos... marriage may be for one day, but photographs are forever". So are we living for a good photo shot?! This may seem a small occurrence, but then, isn't life a pool of small events? It's the small events like these that give shape our character.

Once we start living a life to get approvals from people, then it becomes a habit. People will accept us as we show them we are. But in this course, we too start believing in our untrue image. Then, the disconnect between our self and our fake self occurs, and then comes stress and misery. Now how about dealing with multiple self-images to get approvals from multiple people. Catastrophe. With our fake living, we create fake expectations in others and ourselves. And there is fair chance that we might not fulfill them, for we are not that. Isn't this always the source of all our sorrows?

Progress is the life-blood of life. All our efforts should be towards self-improvement. But to progress, shouldn't we have complete knowledge of our current state? But, by living a fake life, we are nipping all opportunities of progress in bud. I feel the primary reason that we don't feel complete is that we have cut the link between who we are and who we show we are. We are not allowed to make mistakes; we are forced not to think independently, but follow- the herd mentality. We fail, we learn, we progress. We are not allowing ourselves to blossom.