A FORMULA TO HAPPINESS

How to get true moments of pleasure in life...?

                        

Are you satisfied with your life?

Do you really enjoy your work and leisure time?

These and many such questions often confront us, make us think the way we are spending our lives.

While there’s a small number of happy go lucky people around us who take what life offers without considering such questions, there are many restless souls who keep thinking this way throughout their lives.

One can neither define happiness, nor can set standards for it. Psychologists say that people need a balanced combination of satisfying work and enjoyable leisure time to be happy. Perhaps true… but then how could you

explain the enviably pleasing personality of my grandmother, whose career was her dozen children and whose hobbies were confined to the household work.

In fact, there is no formula for happiness. It is perhaps the capacity to which a person enjoys what he has and ignores what he doesn’t have.

In childhood, we have little wishes and dreams and thus there are more joyful moments. Slapstick in a cartoon programme, a simple joke or a class presentation brings twinkles in children’s eyes. But as we grow old, happiness changes its meaning for us. Suddenly, it’s conditional to factors like excitement, popularity. love and acceptance. In teenage years, sweet smile of a smart young fellow makes us happy throughout the day. While a derogatory remark of a teacher or low grades in exams keep us sad for days.

When we enter into the adulthood, our standards for profound joy become more worldly. We equate happiness with love, marriage, birth, wealth and career. These things also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Relationship may be broken, loved ones die and wealth and career never last. For adults, happiness is more complicated and difficult to get. Throughout our lives, we chase different goals and people to get pleasure. We look for happiness everywhere while it lies within our own hearts. We make it conditional by believing that we should achieve certain things to be happy, without realising the fact that the people who already have those objects are not necessarily happy.

Quite often little acts of kindness, unexpected moments and simple things bring profound pleasure in our lives. For e.g. one of my friends says that she enjoys her morning walk more than anything else. Another one gets pleasure from chatting with her maid while for my sister telephone is the source of happiness. She says “Whenever it rings, I know that somebody is thinking about me. And this very feeling fills my heart with joy.”

A long drive with your favourite music in the car, a sunny morning, a warm smile, kind look, friendly gesture, interesting book, good company etc., all provide us many reasons to be happy. But when thinking about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary and such extraordinary moments seem to get rarer the older we get.

To enjoy the essence of life, one has to feel little moments of pleasure rather than waiting for big things. Most of us often ignore beauties of path and desperately chase our goals in pursuit of happiness, thus we get nothing but frustration at reaching there.

Too many expectations from a person, object or occasion always cause trouble. People in our country lavishly consume their money, energy and time at the occasion of marriages, eids and parties, but they hardly enjoy half as much as they spend. The real charms of these moments die due to our pompous attitude.

In the modern competitive world, we have too many choices and we want to succeed in every area. We are so self conscious about our right to things that we have associated happiness with one expression `we must have.’

This attitude makes happiness more complex for us since money, success and status never guarantee pleasure.

The root of happiness lies at sheer contentment and simplicity. If you want to be happy expect less, give more. Be positive in your approach, perceive a setback as a challenge and enjoy what you possess as the blessing of God rather than wish and wail for what you don’t have.