Happiness

“Happy” is the word that we take for grated so often…. What is happiness? What does it means? Are we happy? We say so many times that I m so happy for you.. or we ask if someone is happy… do we realise what we say? Are we happy?
At all points of time we always feel an emptiness inside us.. Sometime we are not happy with out profession, we are dissatisfied with out co-workers, we are restless because some dullard classmate of ours ending up with something big.. a big job, a rich husband! A rich wife or a good looking one! We all do it.. I am no saint and I do it too..
Deep inside the folds of my brain, there is a bug that feeds on thoughts and release unwanted effluents, that makes me feel sick about myself..

I start cribbing, cribbing about practically everything, my studies, my job prospects, my husband, my relatives, the everyday cooking and cleaning.. everything gets to me. I start brooding over the past and start questioning my previous decisions. I start thinking about the road not taken.. would I be home by now had I taken the other road? Where am I .. am I lost in this place called no where?

Since negative thoughts are cyclical and have very strong influence over other around me…I end up creating a cosy hell for myself and my folks too particularly my husband!

After one such cycle.. we sat down me and my husband to think of this depression.. the unhappiness. We realised that happiness is not a bird that needs t o brought and secured in the cage.. But it is something that’s deep with in us. We can kill it or nurture it. It feeds on hope and contentment! If I m content with where I m I did be happy. We realised that if everyone could be happy just by realising how much life still has to give to us, would not there be a better world?
We have decided to bring in certain changes in ourselves.. For our good too. We have decided to always think of this beautiful world. If not we need to watch Antonio Benini’s “Life is Beautiful” Its actually a beautiful movie. An amazing story of a jew caught up in difficult times of the world war. He tries to shield his son from the reality by asking him to play this prolonged game of hide and seek the winner or which will get to ride a patton tank! Antonio Benini dies in the end.. He is shot dead by the Nazis.. but even as I watch the movie I remember waiting for Benini to just jump up and say.. here goes the bullet and I m still alive.. It is so full of hopes and positive energy. And we are not in a milieu, where we should think of surviving each day. We don’t have to fight to procure roti and rice for our family’s only meal in the day! Nor or we in the dark ages of oppressive regimes that we should be scared to voice our opinion. With all the complaints against our politicians, we still are lucky that we don’t have a kind of dumb media that the western developed countries have, or the press censorship of Pakistan, Iran and other middle eastern countries, We women in India we don’t have to wear the thick black medieval veil, we are not married off as third, fifth how-many-th wife of an old rich good-for-nothing- but-rich-bumpkin. I realise with so many privileges, I should never crib, and I better realise the meaning of happiness and Try to happy, after all happiness is not a bird to be caught and locked up in the cage but it is with us.. just go to find it!

Hope to be happy and try to keep others happy too