Don't seek happiness, find the reason of your unhappiness

We often find happiness either in past or in future. The real problem here is we do not know that we always live in present. Be it past or future, we actually live that moment in present only. No-one can live in two moments all together. By telling that we will be happy in future, we are convincing ourselves that we are not happy in the present time. We are in the mode of “Happiness denial” at the same time delaying the happiness.

While being in a school, each one of us thinks college would be more fun. We will be happy in college. By the time one gets a degree we get to know getting a good job will give you happiness. Again you seek that happiness in future. When you actually get a good job, you associate your happiness with the salary hike and promotion. Post-job we think getting a life partner would give us happiness. And this goes on.

No matter what the present is, no matter how happy and blessed we are at present, we always find excuses to deny happiness and redefine the happiness every time. In the sole of agenda to reaching towards the destination of happiness, we always miss the beautiful journey which actually can provide happiness.

And instead of the journey, we make happiness as the destination which gets changed every time. We as a human tend to customize our life, we customize our food preferences. We don’t eat or wear what we used to be. We’ve been continuously updating our database. Changing our tastes in order to make our life beautiful and happy. Same goes with “happiness’. Heartbroken ? Default configuration says we should be unhappy. It’s okay. But why not customize our life to make it happy?

I broke my hand 20 years ago. By default I was supposed to feel pain. Instead of living with pain my parents decided to customize my hand with appropriate medical treatment. Even though I wasn’t supporting the treatment at that particular time,Now I know that treatment was important. And over the period of time broken hand became perfectly fine. I’m happier to see my hand functioning better than before. Life is supposed to break you. By default everyone feels pain. Cry. Be the doctor and treat yourself. Broken pieces will be together soon enough. Tell yourself you are happy, irrespective of situation. Repeat it to yourself. It’ll actually make you happy.

Therefore, happiness is a journey which can easily be enjoyed by customizing our lives. Tell me friends why are you so unhappy every day? You will say I'm unhappy every day because I am an unemployed loser. Or I am too old for most jobs so despite having a lot of education, Also I'm considered a bad risk. But unemployment is not my fault; the company I was working for went out of business. I think that unrealistic expectations when you have less or no influence over most things that happen to you leads to disappointment and eventually leads to unhappiness.

Of course, it is very difficult to accept the transient nature of things. Accepting that "this too shall pass" is powerful mantra for dealing with unhappiness. Ironically, this is applicable to happiness and I find it hard to repeat this mantra when the ship is sailing through smoother waters and things are looking up in my life. I guess it's because I want things to be easy and to be in control. I find it hard to let go of the illusion of control.

It is hard to focus on what we need and not what we want. Society and intelligent advertising have convinced us that we need to buy things and have someone special in our lives to be happy. In reality we are bait to help folks in advertising and the film industry to make their daily bread. It is natural to want comfort through sleeping on a comfortable mattress, wearing cool shoes and getting those likes on Facebook.

In reality, we just need our bare necessities and appreciate the little things we have to be moderately happy. We don't need the cute guy(girl) in our lives to complete us but fairytales have hardwired our brain to look for such connections. When things don't go according to our wishes we make a mountain out of a molehill and become disappointed. A story comes to mind, I was walking on the streets of Bangalore a few years ago. I saw a man(fakir) with a leg amputation begging on the streets. I felt sorry for him and found that I had "only two rupees" (You need at least ten to buy something). I didn't know what to do so I promptly gave the small amount to him and expected a look of disdain, to my surprise he thanked me with a smile.

I spent the whole day thinking about his gesture and returned that evening to give him twenty rupees. He thanked me wholeheartedly with a peaceful smile. Life had shown him great pain, physically, emotionally and financially but he decided to make the hard choice to be happy. Being proactive and choosing your feelings is a skill advocated by a lot of great authors. The crippled fakir had mastered this skill and gratitude, people find it hard to make this simple choice during crisis.

It is natural for a long sailing ship (your life) to expect currents on both sides of the spectrum. As you sail through this long voyage, you need to accept that the ocean is the true captain of your ship and you are a passenger. Focusing on what we need and not what we want makes it easier to sail. It ultimately comes to to very hard choice of staying happy irrespective of the nature of currents to find true joy. People fail in one or more of these scenarios and become unhappy. Practice Hakuna Matata always. Cheers!