In the morning, I was discussing with my sister regarding the reasons of being Happy. She asked me to go through a lecture on TED.com and to read the famous Indian philosophy
कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते म फलेषु कदाचना
कर्मफलेह्तुर भुरमा ते संगोस्त्वकर्मानी॥.
In the afternoon got a text from a friend who asked what is happiness. I was completely bewildered to express answer to him. Few hours ago read a blog post written by another friend who gave this answer through a beautiful story. Finally saw that phenomenal lecture suggested by my sister.
The important thing that finally came out of these events was exploring really what is that we feel and one thing is sure it's nice but the point is what is that which we feel it and how to distinguish this thing from other things.
In programming we have a control structure
if condition
then
Our feeling of happiness has been getting stuck with this structure like if I have lot of money, I will buy a expensive car and become happy; If I will be in a relationship with a girl I will have a emotional push up and hormonal pump up and become happy; If I will get more marks I will be popular and become happy and so on.
This if-then clause is never good at all. When life starts getting into conditional clauses, things will start getting down one day even if it looks superbly prosperous. We always remain in pursuit of something which we call it happiness, which we don't even know whether we got it at a particular instance of time or not but we always remain in it's search. We feel this is boring let's shift to something else or another and so on but we never able to tune up with the correct frequency. We put task list and not able to fulfill it we start feeling odd. We never get out of the race.
The important thing which we sometimes forget is to realize is accepting the things in a natural manner i.e. as it is. If we start taking things as a experience, things start changing a bit. There are times when we feel some spectacular beauty which took us outside of ourselves to a place of great serenity. For example watching a beautiful rainbow, valley or a mountain, we feel as if something exceptionally wonderful and heavenly thing is being kept before us. This happens probably because we are ready somehow to accept the universe as it is rather than what conditions we put in it. This is what we feel, this is what I can say is roughly happiness is. We never say "This valley is beautiful but if I would have seen it on that day or with someone , it would have been more beautiful". This is how we are putting conditional clauses inside our lives.
Recently I visited Lucknow at my cousin's home. Her 16 month old daughter is a superbly enthusiastic and joyful member of her family. Her daughter loves to imitate everyone, plays in dust and sand, likes dancing when music channel is switched on, remains enthusiastic for learning everything around her irrespective of the thought how she is gonna do it or what will be the outcome and whenever you look towards her she will give you one of the world's sweetest smile you ever have seen.This is what is happiness . The moment you engage yourself in the process without thinking out what will be the outcome, without caring what will be the scenario's result whether it will give you publicity or not, whether you will be well known among your peers or not, whether you will have some monetary benefit or not and many more things. The point is engaging yourselves in such a way that you start focusing on our present and living it with passion terminating the thoughts of aftermath of it.
Small kids are always happy, in computer terms I would say they are happy by default. In computer terminology functionality which is provided from the initial designing, those which are inherent, remains unchanged are said to be hardwired. Happiness is hardwired in human body's design from the time of birth, small kids just enjoy this feeling in everything that they do. When we grow up we start shifting from this hardwired functionality to if-then clause model. From there we starts drifting on the road where we finally start feeling that now life sucks. This outcome occurs because the clause model is faulty , no matter how much it sustains giving ourselves a nice feeling whenever we accomplish the conditional task, one day it will start malfunctioning and things starts appearing to be messed up. Now it's the time to drift back to the original road. It's time to focus on process rather than on outcome.
For those for whom the clause model is giving them pleasure continue with that may be someday you may need to change tracks and for those like me who are frustrated with scenarios around them it's time to change.
It's time to plug into our Hardwired Happiness and live the rest of our life in a better way.
