The Goal Is To Be Happy

Rohitanshu Kar
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read
Pic Credit(s): Google Images

Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer, once said, ‘Happiness is like trying to hold water in your hands.’ The harder we try to achieve happiness, the more elusive it becomes. We always think of being happy, but are we really happy? Happiness, like every other known emotions, is not something that we obtain, but rather something that we inhabit.

Not trying to sound too much cliched, my parents repeatedly remind me to grow up to be happy, not rich. Maybe that is one thought that always stuck. Feeling happy is intrinsically important. Somewhere down the years, we have mistaken success to be a measuring stick for happiness. Somewhere along the line, our definition of success became blurred, it became about money. And it’s funny how we always try to supersede our peers in the rat race.

People are progressively becoming unhappier because we’re all narcissistic and grew up being told that we’re special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world. We have Facebook posts telling us how amazing everyone else’s lives are, but not our own. We receive WhatsApp messages everyday, but not the emotions that emanate from those words. Sadly enough, our standards of success have evolved to be skewed and superficial and we confuse pleasure for happiness.

We need to redefine what happiness means to us. Let’s not make happiness a measure of the size of our homes, but the size of our hearts. Let us teach ourselves to live the moment rather than earn for the moment. Lay on your own death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savour the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Learn from the experience. Be thankful for all the best lessons that life will ever give you.

To sum it all up, success is dinner at a 5-star hotel; happiness is impromptu meals at those roadside eateries. Success is pursuing your dreams; happiness is living your dreams. Success is having a home to save yourself from the rain; happiness is dancing in the rain. Success is measurable; happiness is limitless. That my friend, is all that we ever need to remember.

Rohitanshu Kar

Written by

Part-time adult. Full-time happy-go-lucky. Eternally powered by tea/caffeine.

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