Showing posts with label Happyness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Happyness. Show all posts

Into The Shining Sun...

Sitting outside in the patio with a cup of steaming green tea in one hand at 4 in the morning on a (very) cold wintery day provides for the perfect air for contemplation. And with the year at its end, I can’t help but introspect. Nostalgia is the after effect of going through the past 365 days of my life.

Last year I was, during this very time, some 2000 Kilometers away from family and friends, in a completely foreign city, all alone. I had started my year in search for some answers. And serenity, maybe. Without submitting further into it, I shall just say that my mind was in turmoil regarding some recent developments and I was not happy. So I ventured off to a lone trip.

How glad I am that I undertook that trip. To impress upon you the after-effect of that wonderful lone journey, it’s suffice to say that my brother and I are planning to spend a week there soon enough.

I started my year when I was at my lowest. I am ending it by riding on the highest wave there ever was. And the high tide accompanies with it the prospect that it's going to end soon.

One of the major disadvantages of growing up too soon & having parents who allowed and encouraged you to make your own decisions since you were 13 is that by the time you finish of your teenage and take stock of your life, the number of decisions that you probably are going to regret is invariably higher than your fellow mates, who in all likelihood started taking real decisions an year or two back. In such a scenario, you have to be careful so as not to give into the feeling of despair at your past mistakes.

However, I learnt this an year too late.

The past year and some more had seen me being surrounded by self-doubt and regrets. I wasn't sure of some of my choices that I took, and always wondered why I even considered them in the first place. There had been so many moments in my life when I would just wonder how my life would have been had I done things differently. And the difficulty with analyzing a situation with 'What if….' is that it always lead you to believe that things would have been better, which distorts the perspective one should have.

It's only our choices that define us...
Yet, as I examine my each choice & the events that followed up, and consider them in totality with its culmination to where I am right now, I feel so fortunate and blessed. I am proud of my choosing, I am proud of my sticking with them despite my not trusting my own judgement.

Every single step I made seems to have fallen in the right places. Was I  guided by some force…? I don't know. Do we really make conscious choices, or is it just our ego that believes we are taking course of our life…? I don't even know this. Someday I'll discuss these philosophical and theological questions.

But, at this very moment, I feel part of something bigger. I feel as if I am closer to Universe. Not because I don't have problems right now, or I am not cribbing. But because I can understand the nature of things at some subtle level.

All these months, I had been so close to the puzzle, trying my best at rectifying just one part of it, that I couldn't see the larger picture that was being formed.

And in midst of all these decisions, the most significant one is when I decided to let go.

The fishes, during certain periods of year, migrate. And in doing so, they search for some currents that takes them, without any hassles to their destined destinations. The fishes 'choose' their own current, and after that, they simply let go.
I, a piscean, am currently flowing with the stream. And I am not to keen of coming out of it too soon. Till it lasts, I just want to enjoy the view of where I am heading.

Had I done things differently in the past, I would not be here writing these very lines. And things have turned out so much better than I used to conjure them in my mind when playing  'What if..."

Yes, I do have regrets. But if given a chance to go back in time and change things, I would CHOOSE to not do so.
Maybe it's the green tea that is having this effect. :-)

But, I am happy.Yes, in accordance to my previous post, I still don't know how to define happyness, or state the criteria for it. But, I have realized that being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It simply means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.

I had been running so feverishly after happyness for past 12 months, that blinded by the pursuit I ran past it in the very beginning only. And ever since then, the harder i tried, the farther I ran away from it. It's only when I looked back that I saw happyness trying to catch me. And all I have to do now is just stall, take a deep breath, enjoy the view and wait for it to catch up.

And in the past few months, I encountered few beings who in very short span of time became a part of the puzzle. These people, without even realizing bore the promise with them that things are not so bad. They never were. And as the final pieces of the jig saw were falling into places, I found hope. The pandora's box was finally within my grasp. And as I become part of another puzzle, I am not too sure wether I want to open the box yet.

Along with these new persons, I want to thank my 'old' Friends, who have been with me through all the thickest parts, juggling with my mood swings, withstanding my swears and rudeness. For without them, I would have broken  by now; My family, for simply being there; and all those readers who kept on prodding me to write with their mails, thereby increasing my confidence to pick my pen again.

Never would I write about my personal life was something I had decided the moment I started with this journal. It's for those once in a while mails asking for my absence that I am breaking my this rule for once at least. It is to give explanation as to why I wasn't active in these past few months.


Conclusions:
And as I take the last sip of the tea, and watch the sun rise, I can't help but look forward to what's in hold for me next.
Because In the end, I know it's going to be worth it. It always is.

P.s- Happy New Year to all the readers, commentors, and lurkers.
P.p.s- By the way, how's the new theme??

-Setu 'Se2' Gupta

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. 

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This is a journal chronicling the conclusions arrived on, by an Over-Analytical/Hyper-Critical boy, as he embarks on a journey into oblivion, attempts to make sense of the Universe around him, struggles to decipher Emotions, and quarrels with G.O.D, all of this in the hope of eventually stumbling upon....erm....upon something...!

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