“I've often said that I wish people could realise all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it’s not where you are going to find your sense of completion” — Jim Carrey

Happiness… A word used extensively in the English literature and in day-to-day conversations and possibly abused much more than any other word in the English alphabet. Each and every one of us wants to achieve happiness, that sense of completion, that holy grail, the very purpose of our existence.

But how to achieve it?

From last 200,000 years humans have been in search of happiness or fulfillment. Food was the biggest source of happiness for the early Homo Sapiens…..We have come a long way from there and now we base our happiness quotient on several variables like money, fame, material possessions, power etc. And there are many in this world who have it all. Yet there are several millionaires all around the world who commit suicide every year. So is money the answer?

No it’s not.

Right from our childhood we are asked to do stuff and we do it because we are supposed to, because our friends are doing it too, because only then will society accept you. You gotta get straight As in your school, you gotta do Engineering because that’s what smart people do, you gotta stand out in the crowd else no one will notice you, you gotta be a step ahead of you peers or you would wither away.

What?……. You deny to follow these rules?

The world will never accept you…

Right from the moment we are born the world tunes us to start believing that a certain set of things will lead to happiness and subscribes us to a materialistic lifestyle without soliciting our consent. If I were to ask you today what do you want to achieve, I would get a standard set of answers.

• I want to have that high paying lucrative job in that prestigious Corporation
• I want to ask that beautiful girl out.
• I want to look more handsome than I am.
• I want to lose some weight
• I want to buy the new Bugatti Veyron V16.
• I want the new I phone 6
• Android Lollipop is out. I need that update.

We believe that society will finally look “up” to us if we bag some of the items in the above list. That the society will finally acknowledge our existence if we achieve at least a subset of what society claps for.

Do you feel to go back in time and relive your childhood?…Did you take even a second’s pause before answering ‘Yes’? Why does each and every fucking person on the face of the planet feel to return to his childhood? Do you enjoy when you meet your loved ones? Also you do enjoy going to a movie or spending some time on a beach alone, don’t you? Are you not seeing a pattern over here? We are trying to escape, to be isolated from the society we are super-pissed with subconsciously. We are tired trying to live up to society’s expectations. We did that for years in the hope that a day would come when we would finally be accepted. We all want to be accepted. It’s human nature, we are hard-wired for it. We do stuff so that we get noticed. Because if these people don’t notice me then who will? If I don’t live up to society’s expectations and its changing trends then there would be no-one interested in me.

We begin to tamper our definitions of happiness to the level that we begin to subconsciously start hating the very society we are trying to “fit-in”.

It costed me five mobile phones for my perspective to evolve. I never used to be satisfied with the phone I had and I kept upgrading my phone every year just to ride the wave..the wave of madness that was taking the world with it. I used to feel elated with every new purchase, only to realise that the joy was fading away faster than the product’s novelty. Every phone that I bought failed to give me that long-lasting sense of happiness I was in search of. Eventually after the dust had settled, the phone brought me back to the same level of happiness I was at before I bought it.

Your material possessions will never give you the longitude of joy you desire.

There will ALWAYS be someone who is smarter, richer, hotter and more popular than you. And if you base your happiness in wrong things then your greed to succeed will never let you rest. It will never let you take a breath unless you have achieved more than what you already have. How tricky is this greed which tempts you with the promise of something you already possess..!!

You don’t know where your happiness lies?

Too bad….You’re never going to achieve something unless you define it.

You do know what your happiness lies in? Are they the same old things? Money, fame, cars, overflowing wardrobe?

Then you’re in for a disappointment.. Your life will end before your race to achieve them.

Try to figure out activities beyond material objects and try to extract happiness from them. I have recently developed a liking for writing even though I don’t know shit about how to write. I am a beginner and my articles are filled with mistakes and blunders related to structure, grammar and flow of ideas. I know I would be writing absolute shit for the next five years at least but I write anyway. Only by writing, making it public and getting constructive feedback will I be able to get better at what I love doing. No I don’t intend to write full-time ever. No I don’t intend to earn a living from it ever in future. Neither am I that skilled at writing nor do I do every shit which I do, with the aim of earning from it. I don’t intend to make a living from trekking as well.

So why waste time in doing it you ask? Will it give you a hike in your salary? Will it show(read ‘shine’) on your resume?…No?.. So you just keep writing shit and keep embarrassing yourself for no reason? Keep scrambling on those icy slopes and bruising your knees and elbows even though no-one appreciates or even cares about you doing it?

Yes I do. Because that makes me happy. No it won’t give a salary raise but I still do it with more dedication than I have ever shown in fixing shitty pieces of code.

Why you ask? Because my sense of completion is not bound to my bank balance or to the processor speed and screen resolution of my mobile phone or to the price tag of the costliest jacket I have been able to afford or to the car I own. These “trophies” give nothing but a ephemeral state of elation.

It is very important to find those things in life that give you everlasting moments of joy and those which make you feel complete rather than endlessly tempt you go that one extra mile before pulling the plug.

We have been given just one life to live. We have limited time and with every breath we take time is ticking against us. It is really important to define “happiness” in a way that gives meaning to our life.Happiness lies in small things. It lies in having a cup full of hot coffee while relaxing in your backyard and getting lost in the beauty of a chilly winter morning. It lies in the jokes we crack with our friends during lecture breaks. It lies in those moments when we learnt something new. It’s necessary to savour these and remember how good they are because we might lose these moments in the future. It’s not about waiting for big things to happen but about being present in the moment and appreciating the small things that keep on happening.

“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”

I had come across the above lines somewhere on Quora. I don’t know who wrote them but I am eternally grateful to the author. Happiness can only be pursued by defining it. Happiness can only be achieved by defining it wisely.

It takes talent to know how to move ahead,

it takes wisdom to know when to stop.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson