What is happiness and why are we not happy? Even though we thought when we get married to the person that we love, we will live happily ever after. We are not happy, well may be if we buy few houses we will be happy and/or when we have success in our career we will be happy. Then we say when we become a millionaire we will be happy. But we are still not happy. Why, why are we postponing our happiness??? Some people even go into the loop hole of “Why me?” that won’t do any good to you at all. You have to understand life is happening for everyone, in a similar or different ways. Everyone will tell you they have problem. In fact, there’s nobody without any problem in the world. For each individual, their problem is the biggest problem. Often clients, who call me, tell me that they have a really big problem (I’m not exaggerating). But for them it is a big problem. We have to respect and understand that, otherwise we can’t assist them at all.
We are always jumping to catch the next moment as if that’s going to be a permanent solution for our happiness. Therefore we miss out on the reality, which is NOW. If you really think about it “now” is the only reality. You can only experience anything in the now. Therefore yesterday, and tomorrow are only a concept and the reality is only “NOW”. For the logical mind to identify and separate events we mention times and in a deeper level “now” is the only reality which is in our experience and in existence. However most of us know this and still tend to catch the next moment and it creates only anxiety and disappointments. We are constantly trying to do something for the next moment and trying to fix everything outside of our control. We don’t realise the inevitability of that event and we tend to get angry or beat ourselves up for what happened.
For example: When you’re driving, if someone cut you off on the street most people get angry and some people’s whole day is ruined just because of this simple incident. They just keep on blaming that incident and /or something else happened to them on that day. I even remember when I used to work in the corporate environment; people say damn, I had a bad client/ customer today, so my whole day is ruined. We don’t remember to realise the inevitability of that moment and just let go of that thought and come to reality. How stupid are we? Am I telling you not to take any action? Not at all, you have to plan and prepare and do things. What I’m pointing out here is that how stupid are we if we are trying to go back and change something that already happened? We need to realise the inevitability of the past and do the things which is in our control. We can definitely learn from our past, but cannot go back and change that particular event. However we can take responsibility and change the things for the future.
When we start looking at ourselves and the way we are carrying on with our life, we have been always longing for something more. Sometimes we are not sure what that is, so we put a name tag on it and call it “goal, passion, interest, greed, achievement… etc”. What we want with our life is conditioned and programmed in our unconscious mind based on our culture, upbringing, environment, medias, friends and what we learnt from our past experiences. However, when we achieve what we’ve desired we are still not happy. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says “even if you become a King/ Queen of this whole world you will still long for something more than what you already have or try to become more than what you are now”.
As we grew up, we think that when we finish our high school we will be happy. When we finish it, we realised that’s not it, we have to go to university and/or find a job. We again tell ourselves when we find a job I’ll be happy then when we find a job we tell ourselves if I find a girl/ guy I’ll be happy. Then we find someone, we are still not happy after few months/ years we start to wonder is he/she’s the right one and then tell ourselves if I only build a house I can be happy. We have a beautiful house, may be we even buy two or three more houses and we are still not happy. We tell ourselves, may be I missed on having fun and I have to go out and enjoy my life and catch up with my friends so we go clubbing or hang out with friends a lot because we don’t want to miss out on anything, for a short while it feels good, and then when we go home we feel lost, lonely and sometimes even feel depressed. Some people think well, I have to get away from all this stressful life and travel and see all the beautiful places and feel the need to have time and pamper myself. But after coming back, the reality hits them and when they really sit down and think about it, it was an escape in the first place (cannot generalise everyone). It was like dealing with the side affects and putting patches rather than working with the root cause of the problem and getting rid of it. For most people next step is to take drugs or/and alcohol because they have done everything that they knew that will give them happiness so they start drinking and/ or using drugs. It puts you in a loop hole of depression and unawareness, in a very dark place. So for most people life goes something similar to this. Life goes on like this without really experiencing the real nature of “YOU”. I’m not discussing about whether it is right or wrong. I’m simply discussing about what most of us do and how it is connected to our happiness.
I’m sure what I wrote here may push some buttons. If it is getting pushed, it is good, we have to stir it before throw it out; so I want you to ask yourselves why am I getting pushed or feeling uncomfortable with it?
So, who are you? What do you really want?
To me, trying to be happy by external events, people, and wealth are like having a shower every time you feel thirsty. It will cool you down for a bit but it won’t quench your thirst. In a long-run it can be dangerous for you. But this is what most people are trying to do, and believing because everybody’s doing it so they have to do it as well - just to fit in.
One of my recent realisations was finding out what I really want for myself. What you really want for you is for you to find out. To start, you can ask with the question, “Who am I?” It is not about finding out theoretically but actually experiencing it. You want to take responsibility for your own life or just keep on adding more and more and still going to feel empty? I guess you want to take responsibility. Don’t you?
I want to stop here and if any questions or comments I’m happy to answer it. So you get something out of it rather than I tell you how to be happy. Usually, depending on the situation, if someone ask me for help I ask them are you expecting me to console you, give you solution, or simply just talk about it? I don’t believe in any of these. I can certainly guide a person towards where they want to go; so they can always empower themselves and use the tools. Nobody can do anything for you unless you feel the NEED to do something about your own life.
If I say something you can either choose to belief or disbelief it. If you belief it, it won’t really make much difference and you carrying on with your life believing that you know. But unless you put it into action and “experience” it as a truth for yourself you won’t really know it. If you disbelief what I say, it won’t do anything for you either. You just closed the door to even check if there’s anything more to you and your life. I don’t want you to belief or disbelief what I’m saying here. Just keep an open mind and consider what I wrote here. That will guide you to the experiential truth if you want it.
