In Pursuit of HappYness...!
I am not happy. I accept it.
I had expected to start my journal with something funny that would hook people up, or at least on a more positive note. But lets face it. I am not happy.
This doesn’t mean that I am unhappy. No. I am not sad. I am not miserable, or depressed. And in no way am I suicidal. It’s just that I am not happy.
And I am sure its no big deal. 99 % of the world population is unhappy. But that is where it deviates. They believe they have reasons to be unhappy. I don’t have a reason to not be happy. Yet I am not.
What is happyness?
It’s one of the first 20 words my mum taught me. You know, the antonyms: papa-mummy, good-bad, happy-sad. It must have gone something like this. And life was so simple. You give me a chocolate. I am happy and you are good. The way it was supposed to be. Then we grew up. Only to realize that mum’s dictionary lacked the meaning of happyness.
So, tell me. What is it? I’ll give you some options:
Attainment of Nirvana is happiness. –Gautama Buddha
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. –Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness ain't a thing in itself--it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. –Mark Twain
Revered Buddha, if that is the case than the current generation is doomed. We all are still waiting for the second coming to save us. And by nirvana did you somehow mean Kurt Cobain?
Have you realized Gandhiji that by your interpretation Hitler should have died a happy soul? Reading his suicide note, I doubt it. Or maybe you forgot to add ‘with nature’ after harmony. Tch tch!!
Yes Twain sir, you have a point there. And we have a potential winner.
Think about it. Maybe he is right. We have always illustrated our lives by the two extremes of life. My mum taught me antonyms when I was two. Good-Bad. Happy-Sad. It’s 17 years fast forward and life is not so simple anymore. Absence of melancholy makes us deceive it as happyness. But is it really so?
What happened to superlatives and comparative adjectives? Weren’t they meant to convey the different degrees of happyness?
Okay, let us keep all that we have read by now aside. Lets start from scratch. Happyness is a feeling. Lets agree upon this. It’s a pleasant feeling. Someone just said that they love you. You are happy. Great.
But why happy? What happened from the moment you heard those words to the moment you feel happy?
With a background in Medicine, I can take a relatively good shot at the question. Your brain interprets those three words. It then realizes that it means something good. Movies have made sure of it. This excites the hypothalamus. And the hypothalamo-hypophysial system secretes what is known as endorphins. These chemicals act on your limbic region in brain, and you are happy. And that, my dear friends, is the physiology/pathology behind happyness.
So why is happyness such a sought after thing? It’s just a chemical disturbance. It’s like a neurological disorder. Boom! It can happen to anyone.
Don’t believe me. As much as 50% of our state of happyness is characterized by our genes! Did I hear someone say happyness is in our hand?
And too much of happyness is good, right? And we are born to be as happy as possible? That’s what we all are striving for. That’s how we define the purpose of our existence, right?
An experiment was conducted to see what is the long-term effect of happyness on a mouse like increase in life expectancy, productivity etc. so that they can extrapolate the figures achieved to humans. For this, they made an elaborate cage for mouse, with everything he would require for happyness.
Yet they found he wasn’t happy. So they decided that rather than to trick his brain into releasing endorphins, why not inject it. But, then mouse is not striving for happyness. Purpose failed.
One of them had a brainwave, and he made some changes in the cage. Now whenever the mouse pressed a button on floor, he was given a mild electric shock in the skull that very precisely stimulated the release of endorphins. Pretty soon, the mouse worked up to the fact that pressing the button made him feel good, made him forget about the fact that he is in a cage, and made him unaware that he doesn’t know why he is here. As expected, our tiny little friend got so addicted to the feeling that he kept on pressing the button until, eventually, he died. The poor scientists must have really mourned the loss.
Need I say more?
It proves beyond doubt that none of us know what happyness truly is. And most of us have never even felt the happyness that is written in the books, in the scriptures. And it’s the one thing every single one of us is in pursuit of.
Maybe we are not even meant to be happy. Old testament explains it by Eve eating the apple. Greeks have their own myth about Pandora's Box. The moment it was opened, everything that could make mankind Unhappy escaped out. And it reminds me of The Matrix. Maybe Happyness is just an illusion, created so that we are forever trapped in it's pursuit, rendering us incapable of thinking about things that really matter.
Dissident? Yes.
Depressed/Pessimist? No.
We want to get a job so that we can be happy. We want to have a great partner, so that we can be happy. We take drugs, we drink, and we get high so as to release endorphins. The notion that money doesn’t make us happy, it simply makes us less miserable has been prevailing since last 4 decades. Yet that’s the only reference we find to measure our happyness. Again we forget that it simply tells us how less unhappy we are.
This entry has somehow ended up with loads of question marks. And though these might look like rhetorical questions, they definitely are not. So if you can answer any one of the questions above regarding happyness, please do so through here. And if you can teach me the immortal skill to happyness, I’ll be your slave. Correction: A happy slave.
Conclusions:
Like everyone else, even I don’t know what is happyness. But, and, in spite of it I have realized that being happy is over-rated. We will forever be in pursuit of it. I am satisfied; I have almost everything I had desired since I was 10.
What I do know is that I definitely lack answers to some questions. Maybe it’s these questions that are the key to happyness. Or maybe it’s that I am deprived of the ‘happy-gene’, that has left me incapable of ever being happy. Or maybe I need to open Pandora's box. And find the only thing left inside it now. Hope.
Or maybe to be truly happy, I must let go of what it means to be truly happy. You do have a point here Confucius.
-Setu 'Se2' Gupta
P.S:-I stress again that, even though this might appear to some as a depressed piece written by a more melancholy guy than you have ever met, it is not so. I am a very happy normal teenager, who is experiencing mid-life crisis some 20 years earlier than he is meant to.
21 Commendable Insights:
Happy-ness i believe for most of us is an external factor, an emotion for which we rely on others. The sooner we stop depending on people for our happiness, the better we can experience the emotion of elation...
I just found your blog and wow this post is intellectal...
But i think you spelt happiness wrong, or was that intentional?
Sorry, interesting post though :)
@bottonPom: thanx for the comment gal...it makes me so happy that you found the blog...
Happyness was spelled that way intentionally for 2 reasons...
1)happyness and happiness means two different things...happiness is more concerned with the social well being..while happyness is the real thing..its related to us...
check it out at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=happyness
2) the movie pursuit of happyness had it as happyness and not as happiness...:)
Oh ok :)
I was just curious, if I hadn't asked it would've bugged me for ages..
If you get a chance have a look at my blog?
http://takemetomovieland.blogspot.com/
It's a lot less smart than this one...
@ButtonPom-checked your blog..its awsum..:)..i am myself a movie buff...N do keep checking out my site for new stuff..and thnx for commenting...!
Thanks, follow me?
hey, you wrote really well..you know what, all I can say is that I'd really wanna read more. This is your first post nah. Great start ya. So I guess that makes me wanna follow. You should write more.. :)
@heena-thank you so much heena...really...would definitely write more...:)
Thank you for your input on my blog! It looks like you have a great blog started too, and I love the fact that you share your feelings on it. I think all of us are at some time unhappy, and it is okay to feel that way as long as we don't let it control us. However, I do wish you happiness in the future, and keep up the good work on your blog! :)
I do not know wht 2 say...nt becoz im at a loss of words, bt becoz i cnt deem it gud 2 type wht i cannot think of...!!
@utsav-thanx a lot dude...your saying this means much more than your not saying it....this coming from a person who would comment on everything he gets hold of...:)
Alright, hands down, I loved it!
Thank you for visiting and now following my blog! :)
You have some great thoughts here, very abstract. I hope that maybe someday you won't feel quite so resigned to unhappiness. I for one feel certain that it is out there and attainable. Maybe my own Happiness Project (if you continue to read along!) will help you in some way :)
Again, great blog. Your writing is something to be happy about :)
@laurabee-
Thanx gal...for much appreciation...but my point was...do we know what happyness is?? do you know what it is?? I will definitely be following your happiness project...but beware..i might just raise some questions/doubts...::P
your blog is awesome quite unnecessary to point out..... very abstract yet fresh.... bu are you happy only if there is no unpleasantness around you.... i dont think so.... your second example of adolf hitler.... i mean there was so much unpleasantness around him but still he was never unhappy about it... was he....
so happiness what i believe is very subjective... no we do not not know what happiness is.... but we are still pursuing it... damn we.... it is every single person out there who is pursuing it.... we are not meant to.... the day we stop this cat and dog race(x feels money leads to happiness... he is busy acquiring money.... y feels good marks will bring happiness he spends his entire life getting good marks z feels nothing can bring happines... so he does nothing.... but still neither x'y'z are happy) to acquire happiness...
it is going to be better out there]
and then we might have a hint to what happinesss actually is.......:)
and as long as the physiology aspect is concerned well then compare mothers love to an increase in the oxytocin level in the body.....they'll give you reason for everything....
good luck:)
@Aakanksha-
Thanks for your insight & appreciation, and welcome to my conclusions..:)
Well, are we truly happy if our happiness is subject to others and our surrounding. Long-lasting happyness comes from within na...???
And Very descriptively you have put the pursuit of happyness in X,Y and Z variables...really like it,,,
And yup, maybe its all hormones and nothing else..."the chemical locha" really guides us i guess...:)
Isso e muito interessante
@Celio-
muito obrigado ..:)
Hey
i just chanced upon this site while surfing the net..i am not very comfortable expressing my thoughts on public forums aka blogs like you and would hence first like to say that it's a tough yet commendable job.
Actually your question on how to seek eternal happiness prompted me to write this. I don’t know about eternal happiness as life is always punctuated by difficult situations. But ,yes, trying to be happy always might be possible. See my father is very much into reading the bhagvad gita and trying to inculcate it's principles in our daily lives. I am a daily witness to this experiment of his and so wud not like anyone to think of me as a preacher since I am not a devout follower yet. However it has influenced me and my thoughts to some extent.
The thing that gita has made me realize is that when u put in ur every ounce of energy, resource, thoughts into doing something u strongly believe in without worrying about what it may or may not bring, it makes you automatically happy because after its completion u would not have any regrets even if it invites criticism (even from ur loved ones) or if the task’s results are not as favourable as expected. Criticism and regrets, I believe, are the principle precursors to an unhappy state of mind. But because u have done everything in ur power to make that thing a success, their affect is greatly reduced, just enough to keep u on ground.
My point is god has endowed us with this beautiful creation of his which we call as the HUMAN BODY and when this body works in synchrony with the divine power or the nature as we call it, happiness remains no longer a thing to be sought as it becomes an automatic product of it’s hard and sincere work. It becomes a give and take process where u receive what u deserve in form of energies.
Sometimes there are instances when u no longer have a say in the course ur life takes.When there seems no way out. Overcoming that type of sadness/agony still leaves me speechless. Even the gita which I am sure holds the answer ,hasn’t helped me perceive it yet.
Hope no one has to suffer like that to understand the meaning of happiness, and life too
Well my take on this topic might feel too far-fetched and impractical…but believe me it has indeed proved itself true in simple yet incredible ways again and again. This has kept me hopeful even if not happy always, because I know that as long as I have a healthy mind and a healthy body I’ll continue working on things I believe in and enjoy, and have happiness ‘walk up to me”.
Next time u feel unhappy about some thing or just discontent with ur life,picture a beggar,or a physically challenged guy and think about the fact that these less fortunate beings only dream about the things u take for granted. It can be anything.
I am sure u’ll find urself smiling a grateful yet guilty smile.
Might seem too cliché but always cheers me up.
Too long, sorry
@anonymous- Even though it had been a while since any sort of discussion was held on this topic, I took it to be a closed forum and so pardon my delay in replying.
Firstly, Welcome to my conclusions. I am glad that you decided to comment, and would hope that you will not be anonymous in your further comments, if there will be.
Regrets & criticism necessarily do not lead to unhappyness. It's always the way you take it. I have regrets and I wouldn't want it to be changed. Because both of these stuff actually make you grow, even though it sounds to morally correct to be true.
However, having said this I totally agree with your further comments. Gita indeed holds some and in all probability all the answers that our theological minds would require. I have had two failed attempts at reading the holy book. However, at 20 years I can console myself by planning to understand in the next 30 years.
What surprises me is the fact that I wrote a blog before reading your comment, and somehow, what I had in mind today so matches with what you had in mind. I would suggest you read "into the shining sun…' :)
Thanks for such a wonderful and thought provoking comment.
you had me at Y.
:-)
p.s.: happiness is a blog that does not make me do captchas.
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