How To Be Happy?
Recently I happen to be in a group meditation session where we had an initial discussion before the meditation started. The trainer asked us to think about the happiest golden moments of your life. Everybody has some! He very casually spoke. I felt so hard, but nothing came to my mind. It was like a mental block.
It was a tiny thing, but somehow it made me quite depressed. After all, I am in my fifties, that means, I have already lived more than fifty percent of my life, and I don’t have a single blissful moment that I can think of? The only words that kept on buzzing in my minds were “Reasons”, “Targets”, “Goals”, “Traumas” etc.
My life had gone in a sort of infinite loop where I was stuck in “I will be happy if…” and “I am not happy because…”. And I very badly needed to break this loop and come out of it. But is it possible?
I am a management consultant, so I decided to solve my problem in my own professional way. You first need to to make a list of root causes of the problem to start coming out with solutions. So I made the list of all the words/phrases listed above like “reasons”, “Targets” etc.
So, I will be happy if I get rid of all these points. How is it possible? Or is it normal? This looks to be crazy. These kinds of solutions can work on a production floor, but will it work in somebody’s life? Am I coming to a solution that I needed to be happy just for the sake of being happy? No, it required deeper introspection.
I analyzed all the above words/phrases more closely to find any kind of relationship among them.
My Eureka moment came after a few hours of my brain-storming sessions. Yes, I found the final solution to being happy. All the reasons for me not being happy belong either to my future or to my past. Suddenly I found it so simple. It has nothing to do with what is wrong in my life. I am either living in my past or in my future. If I have to be happy, I have to come out of the traumas of the past and fears of the future. Reason for not being happy was looking to intricate a few hours ago, and now, I found it so obvious and straightforward.
I am so happy to write that just now I found the happiest golden moments of my life it is as I am writing this sentence. This very moment.
I am happy that I found a way to be happy. And I know I will have only golden moments in the rest of my lives.
I would like to end this post with what my favorite poet once said:
