Understanding Happiness
I was watching the movie ‘The pursuit of happyness’, and it got me thinking. It ends with the protagonist saying, “This part of my life is called happiness”. But one should not make the mistake of believing this part of his life lasted forever. A quick Google search into the real Chris Gardner’s life will reveal that he faced adversities long after he got the job at Dean Witter Reynolds. The adversities of life never end, and the pursuit of happiness is just that — an unending pursuit. Whatever short bursts of happiness come our way, fade away as quickly as they come. There are always bigger problems to face, meaner demons to fight and happiness seems just as far away as when we started. In pursuit of happiness, we have to cross the junction of despair — where we end up asking ourselves, “What the hell is the point of all this?”. Ever-lasting happiness is a myth and it is reserved only for the chosen ones amongst us. Life is pretty dark, isn’t it?
WRONG! Absolutely wrong! We’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg and not realizing what this floating piece of ice really is. We all know the feeling of being happy (at least momentarily), but how much have we really tried to understand this basic emotion? The word ‘happiness’ is so commonplace, yet so complex that humanity still struggles to define it. The dictionary defines the word ‘happy’ as “Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment”. Ponder over this a bit. Neither the word ‘pleasure’, nor ‘contentment’ is enough to define ‘happy’. If you’ve had a happy childhood, you’ll remember that you were seeking neither pleasure nor contentment. You just woke up happy, stayed happy all day long, and went to bed happy. If you did nothing all day, you were still happy. Whether you had a hundred toys or just a stick to play with, you were still happy. What is happiness then, really?
“Happiness is the side effect of Internal Peace”
That’s how I would describe it from my experience. Before I elaborate this further, let us understand what ‘peace’ means. Just as darkness is the absence of light, peace is simply the absence of stress or conflict. Darkness cannot be created. It can only be achieved by getting rid of all light. Similarly, peace can only be achieved by getting rid of all conflicts. So, to understand peace, we must understand conflict.
When two or more parties strive for different outcomes from the same resources, a state of conflict arises. To resolve conflict, all opposing parties have to be united and aligned to the same goal. Just as the resolution of conflict in the world achieves world peace, the resolution of conflict within us achieves internal peace. Complete integrity of the conflicting parties — body, thought and emotion — resolves all internal conflicts to achieve internal peace.
Now, think about all the times in your life that you’ve felt happy. Playing with your favourite toy, dating the partner of your dreams, birth of your child, etc. The only thing that you’ll find in common is that regardless of other situations in your life, in that moment you were absolutely focused on a single thing and you got what you desired. There was no stress or conflict. The same situations would have brought misery if you were internally conflicted. Playing with your favourite toy, but eyeing the other kid’s toy — misery. Dating an amazing person, but confused about being in love with another — misery. Birth of your child, but worrying about future finances — misery. Even longer lasting forms of happiness such as being in love, arise out of a stronger state of peace. Our thoughts and emotions are focused on a single object, and nothing else matters. Even if you get robbed of everything you have when you’re in love, you might get momentarily disturbed, but you still sleep happily at the end of the day because you’re always at peace. Only one thing matters. There is unwavering focus, no conflict. So integrity leads to the absence of internal conflict, which achieves internal peace, and its side effect is happiness.
Let me give you another analogy. Imagine a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you live on a planet that does not know about the existence of mangoes. One day, the millennium falcon was flying over and a strange orange orb fell in your lap. It is a mango from Earth, but you don’t know what it is. It smelt like food, so you ate it, fell in love with it, wanted more of it. But how would you get more? You don’t know what it is or where it came form! If your civilization was anything like the Earth of today, you would most probably study the mango, reverse engineer it, figure out it’s composition, and try to produce an artificial mango. Hopefully after investing years of research and mountains of money, you might obtain something that remotely tastes like a mango. Realistically, you might not even be alive to taste it.
Now, while you’ve been breaking your head over this problem, a simple farmer on Earth is planting mango trees in his garden, taking care of the plants by watering them, keeping the pests away, nurturing them, and being rewarded with an unlimited lifetime supply of mangoes. Who is the more successful person? The simpleton who enjoyed mangoes his whole life, or the great scientist who never tasted another mango? The aim was to eat more mangoes, wasn’t it? If you had just known about the existence of the mango tree, you too would have enjoyed mangoes all your life.
Similarly, happiness is the fruit of the tree of peace. If you grow a healthy tree, you will enjoy the fruit. You have to focus on the tree, not the fruit. Happiness is not the goal. The goal is to resolve all internal conflicts to achieve internal peace. And the way to do achieve that is complete integrity of body, thought and emotion. Happiness will automatically come as a side effect.
This discussions remains incomplete without one critical argument. I mentioned that when you are completely focused on something in a moment and get what you want, you are happy. But what if you don’t get what you want? Your favourite toy breaks, or your partner suddenly leaves you. What do you do when adversity strikes?
You are happy when you get what you are completely focused on. Looking at this from another perspective, you are happy when you completely focus on whatever you get. Good, bad or ugly, being completely involved with life is the key to ever-lasting happiness. This is exactly what all the spiritual masters mean when they say “live in the moment”. Focus on whatever is in the moment. Pay complete attention and be fully involved. Live like this every moment, and happiness is yours for life. All it takes is the willingness to put in the efforts. It is time to stop the pursuit of happiness and begin the journey to singularity.
