An outline to happiness

     Brace yourself, this one is going to be pretty long and so if you have pending assignments or work to be done, I’ve warned you beforehand. What’s been the biggest day of your life so far? The Happiest Day? Or actually ‘days’?  The ones which you simply can’t forget. The ones which have left an imprint on you that’s hard to rub off. Do they have anything in common? Think it over and even if you don’t have an answer, I am confident that you are going to side with what I’m going to say.

    To be honest, I think all the days that I imagined to be ‘great’ in my head don’t necessarily come up to my consciousness that often as compared to those which I didn’t know could turn out to be great. Read that again. Don’t you often feel that whenever you expect something to be great and then when you finally get it, somehow it loses its valence a bit? Just a random thought. Actually that’s a lie. It’s more of an aftermath of a lecture that I attended earlier on how our expectations in themselves become self sabotaging mechanisms. I know it sounds drab. And all high and mighty. And something which we’ve often read and heard about but the whole process of building those expectations is so interesting in itself that one can’t really ‘not expect’ right? Very recently someone told me that it’s the anticipation of things and events which gives us happiness and the thought has got stuck in my head and I’m going to hold on to that. Back to what I began with. So when I think of ‘happy days’ so to say, I have discovered that most of them were the ones which began on a very normal gradient but the very simplicity of it is what made it great? Does it sound weird? Probably. Let me give an example here. School was definitely an amazing place despite the tears, grumbles, sweat and what not and ofcourse it’s where I met my friends whom I’m going to trouble for eternity. When I think back, yes all those big days like ‘farewell’ and ‘picnics’ definitely stir up memories but their shades are lighter than those monotonous days where we used to sit in the balcony and complain about our pathetic lives ( that hasn’t changed), have intellectually stimulated walks in the park, divide food during lunch and just being there together. It’s those little things and tiny everyday incidents which radiate happiness and isn’t that happiness is supposed to be? All our lives we think that if we get this and that, we’d be truly happy but that state of happiness will never actually be what we expect it to be. It will be low in intensity as compared to the zillion things which we might encounter on the way from one thing, one place, one dream to another. Like the song ‘Little Things’, I guess our really happy selves emerge as a product of those tiny moments and memories scattered along different routes. Philosophical? Preachy? Maybe. Of course one can’t ever let go of having expectations ( I definitely can’t!) because it in some way as I mentioned before drives us but now that I’ve pondered and written so much, I think I’m going to try and remember this. I’m going to try and be happy with what I have, what I’ve had and not equating my happiness with things I don’t.  It’s start and it’s going to be tough but well it’s start. And I’m feeling positive today. I planned on writing much more but I think abhi ke liye itna hi..