Actually, I do come across people who ask me how to be happy
all the time. Now, imagine if you are happy all the time? You would probably start
craving for times of depression! Isn’t that the law of nature? We always will
crave for something that we donot have – the grass on the other side, the
neighbor’s wife, the colleague’s salary, the celebrity’s house, the online friend’s
country and the list goes on….
Well then you might ask, ‘Does this mean happiness is
something we should not strive for?’ Actually, let’s stop striving and start
arriving – what that means is let’s learn the concept of acceptance. If we are
happy, we are happy – let’s acknowledge and accept and celebrate and move on
without being too attached to it. Please donot misconstrue the phrase ‘without
being too attached to it’. It does not mean that we take happiness with a pinch
of salt and be skeptical about it. Instead, what this means is that we embrace
happiness completely, enjoy it completely without inhibitions and then move on
with satisfaction. Look at it with positivity (‘What a wonderful time it was’) rather
than negativity (‘Why does it not last forever?’)
Recently, I participated in an event with really close friends and we
ended the evening on such a satisfactory note that we did not want the evening
to end and somebody said ‘Wish we could capture this moment and store it
somewhere, so we could come back to this moment again and again whenever we
want’. Have you ever felt this way? A fantastic business performance in a particular FY and the Chief Sales Officer remarked 'Wish we could have this kind of performance and fantastic team spirit at all times!'
What do you notice about this?
And it is always inevitable that as we move through life,
our flavors of happiness keep changing and sometime later we stumble upon the
same intensity of happiness or even more in another form and shape and flavor. So, bottom
line, every corner we turn, there could be happiness waiting for us and it is
upto us whether we are still thinking about the happiness we left in the last
corner and fail to recognize the happiness waiting in THIS corner.
This similarly happened to me after 3 weeks of a splendid
holiday where my sister and her daughter came over from the US and we did not
want the days to end. And when it was time to say goodbye, it was
heart-breaking. And we had to move on and we did. I recognized I was on the arm
of 'Melancholy' and she was showing me the dark sights but 'Happiness' was also
standing right there in the form of memories.
As my 6 year old niece said wisely after returning to the US
‘We are here physically but our hearts are still in India. Hearts are coming on
the next flight and will be here day after tomorrow’. In her simplicity, she
accepted the fact that she will be without her heart for the next 2 days and
after that she will have her heart back.
Acceptance is such a powerful tool to help us recognize
where we are standing and where we want to be. In the example above, I greeted 'Happiness', spent some time with her and then bade her goodbye and took the arm
of 'Melancholy’ and started walking. However, ‘Happiness’ was waiting just as I turned the corner in the form of some excellent references from my clients.
I was torn between leaving the arm of 'Melancholy' and taking the arm of 'Happiness', which I did and seeing me with Happiness, Melancholy slowly faded
away (remember, three is a crowd?).
What this means is we will keep meeting Happiness,
Melancholy, Joy, Hurt and others at various times while we traverse the path of
life – it is just about acknowledging them, greeting them and never being attached
to them forever. If we feel attached to somebody for a long time, it is time to
ask the question – ‘What did I miss on the way?’ This is one place where
loyalty is not a necessity, but just a recognition....
No comments:
Post a Comment