Happiness @ The Workplace...

' Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony' - Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness - As simple and straight forward a word it may seem, this is the most elusive of the human emotions to hold onto. As it goes with everything momentary, this emotion too leaves a fading trail, a lingering after taste long after it has left us.

The biggest wonder that have blatantly missed a mention in our history books, is how the very definition of happiness has changed over our evolutionary years; so much so, that we now even fail to trace its origins back to the source. It's quite simply encoded in our own reflexes. As our society evolved, sometimes by the nudge of progress, and other times by the uniquely human urge to overpower the lesser known species, we kept convincing our hearts of some make-believe notions that resemble happiness. A notion that in time will not even match up to the basic definition of corresponding 'happiness' with a smile across our face.

The modern times are a different ballgame though, especially at a place where humans spend an un-exaggerated 60% of their productive lifespan – the “human” workplace. A place where you are clocked by the hour and unsuspectingly so, your ambitions and dreams get clocked by the second. You start out wearing a smile that is an image of the happiness within and in no time the unruly workplace deems it to be your KRA and expects you to carry on the ‘good work’ so others stay 'engaged'. In time, the source house of happiness within us got depleted; however, the expectations have only increased multi fold with the first climb you took up that dreaded corporate ladder, and more importantly, that one extra carrot hanging right at your nose tip.

You most instinctively start sporting something called ‘the mask’ – an unmistakable replica of yourself; however, devoid of the one thing that makes you, you – your soul.

Happiness as we know it, faces a very unique challenge as it enters the ‘human workplace’, and it needs a very ‘human’ treatment from the people running it to first recognize this truth and then go on to deal with it. While programs run our backend show, in our times the front end are yet to get encroached completely by machines, and so long as we have a human manning that spot, a human touch will be needed.

If it is to be believed that the purpose of our life on Earth is to create happiness for ourselves and for others we touch, then we are definitely missing a big target audience. But as we observed though traces of history, the human kind will push through its limits only when faced with an imminent catastrophe, when it reaches its precipice which calls for desperate measures. If you are closer to that than others, its time you start your journey inwards, where you first find your lost heartbeat and later the happiness you seek!