When I started to write I had Paul Coelho in my mind and his novel; “The Alchemist”. If you have read that book, you might have already guessed by now, what I am exactly going to write in this post. And, in case, if you have not read it, don’t worry; you will get a good picture by the time you finish this post.
Chasing happiness – it always starts in home and it ends in home! Since we are born, we all are vying for something extraordinary than the normal person – even our parents coax us for doing better in class, exams, competition. It even matters in the tuition classes – about how well we have performed in a week. That really matters when we are young, because that is what going to determine our future in the long run. And the intensity of this toughness could be felt through the current statistics of competition. These days, students in class 6 starts eying for the competitive examination which they have to sit may be something like after 6 years – after they graduate from their intermediate level.
This radical change of changing our entire childhood and our normal way of working has definitely put one thing in danger – our state of mind, its functionality which invites even more dire things like depression, anxiety and mental related problems. Because, mind has a capacity to handle things according to the age. Some of us might achieve something out of this marathon of competition, but majority of us will lose – as a whole our society and our country will lose in the mega front.
This marathon of vying with your friend, then with your neighbors, then with the people for a competition in your country, and then finally with the world in some cases. This is nothing more than a momentary bliss. A state of happiness of mind. We put our everything for whole year or even years and finally what we get is a stint of happiness which fades away within the blink of an eye – Why? Because, our mind is still jagged with those competitive nature of vying with others. It’s just like gambling, when you win a bet, we use to get allured to more of it and we bet even more. And, if we loose, we loose everything – our friends, our family and everything we care about. Because a winning person never wants to lose and when he/she loses it is extremely devastating like anything.
In fact, in this run, we are chasing happiness; for us and for our family and those who are closely linked to us. We work hard and then we leave our family for the greener pasture somewhere else far from home – in search of happiness. When we find it, we feel like we have achieved something magnificent, something so precious that we should not be losing at any cost, because we are almost there in search of happiness, which vows to give us all those happiness we ever dreamt of. We dedicate ourself for the service of others, for others full benefit while we are looking at our own iota of benefit. We try to think positive and we find another little happiness after years and we feel happy again.
This gambling continues and we keep going; we keep searching. We tell ourself, once more, just a bit more – we are almost there and now all those affliction are coming into being; it is going to pay us now. But, then, suddenly it fades away in the misty and foggy weather. But, still we do not lose our hope. We keep our hopes high and our guts strong. We keep clinging into that one single thin thread between that impending new dawn and the complete darkness. We fought all this way to ward off those darkness, but the shadow still persists.
But, finally, a day comes when we realize that our happiness lies with where we belong. We realize that our happiness lies in our family (our mom, dad, sisters, brothers, and relatives) – those who have always been with us – in our ups and downs of life – suffered together and fought together. Our happiness lies in the dinner table of our family (when we can have dinner together), happiness lies with our friends (when four of us sit in the same bike pushing each other), laughing and giggling and hurling the bike in air without caring for the rules, happiness lies in those long night stay with friends and talking and chatting with lights turned off till it becomes dawn, happiness lies in our village when we sit in the field and hear the crippling sound of bird far away in the garden, happiness lies in those cold evening when we sit huddled together around the fire with our loved ones.
The time we passed was filled with more happiness than what we have now when we are alone. We realize that happiness can’t be chased. The more you chase it, the farther it runs away from you.
Happiness doesn’t lie in your big achievements, for which you have lost so much that it is never going to pay you back at any cost. Happiness doesn’t lie in leaving your home when you are young and return to see everything changed.
Find your happiness in your home and with what you have, because those are the things that will give you the true happiness. Money can’t buy happiness, big-achievements can’t buy happiness.
Think of it!
A Walk To Remember 