Living on the H
I like asking random questions. I am too old for outdated niceties like “How are you?” or millennial greetings like “What’s up?”. Of course, i know the answers to both the questions — “Compared to what?” and “Our collective ignorance?” respectively — but it’s best to avoid stuff that don’t mean anything worth spending your likelihood on. They say life is too short, before going ahead and wasting it on small talks and bigger facades. If we’re not going to keep it real, then at least be conscious of what’s going on, right? Or is that too much to ask for?
Anyway, the question in question here was “On a scale of 0 to 10, how happy are you?” I received quite a lot of numbers and some explanations behind them too. Oh yes, some decimals as well. The best answer has to be “It changes from one day to another.” Might be 6 today and 5 tomorrow and 9 the day after. This perspective stands out because it shows how our method of rating anything (and everything) has more to do with us than the objects that we rate. If you don’t like a movie or are biased against those involved with it, you are most likely to downgrade it. Similarly, if you’re asked to measure your friend’s work, chances are you’ll let your inner critique relax a bit. That’s the culture of rating in a nutshell. In other words, completely overrated.
Now that we’ve walked through the method behind the method, let me chaperone you through the results. When people claim to be happy, they are talking in instantaneous mode. If a cloud of worry from last week is still hovering over you on a Tuesday afternoon, you’ll rate your happiness lower than it has to be. Maybe less than 5 sometimes. You’d ignore the countless blessings — poor math!—in your life and the comforts you take for granted and the privilege you’ve come to enjoy. Why? Because that cloud won’t let you see properly. On the other hand, if you were having a pleasant day with little to no backlogs, then you’d be tempted to exaggerate your happiness.
In conclusion, let me leave you with a theory of mine. I believe the amount of sadness in everybody’s existence remains the same whereas the amount of happiness varies from personality to personality. A person, irrespective of their background, undergoes a fixed degree of sorrow via different stages of life while the degree of joy depends on the person’s desire to be joyous. Even if a person hails from a wealthy family, she will experience the same amount of heartaches as her maid does. The difference in their societal status won’t get in the way of this divine distribution of sadness. However, their happiness will be a factor of their core personality; whatever makes them happy will continue to make them happy. And if they wish to be happier, they’ll manage to score higher on the happiness chart of their own design. However, they can’t possibly be sadder than the other person. That won’t happen. Nope, even listening to Arijit all day long won’t help.
Just like the perfect circle in the poorly drawn graph above, your sadness would be definite while your happiness will be uneven, wayward but totally in sync with whichever circle you choose for yourself.
