I had a happy childhood… I think. I cannot recall any intensely happy moments, but neither do I remember any sad moments.
So that’s one of the rules of memory and also of happiness – we have selective memories and we forget the happy times we have had in our life.
So what is Happiness? Happiness to me is a pleasurable feeling associated with an event – big or small – in my life. Happiness can be a bouquet of roses which gives me that pleasure each time I look at it and if I am able to keep those roses looking fresh beyond 10 days. Happiness to me is seeing the seeds I planted on a beautiful spring day, sprout in my containers. Happiness is the feeling I get when my daughter recounts her day to me, nothing special, we didn’t buy anything, we didn’t sell anything, we were just together.
I started reading and exploring about happiness actively once I had crossed the timeline of getting and keeping a job, getting and maintaining a house, my kids in good public schools, my husband with a good job. It seemed like around the time when all my ducks were in a row, so to speak, I started wanting more.
Contented with little, yet wishing for more.” – Charles Lamb
One of the first books I read was Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness. I was in awe of all the research quoted in the book, but more than that the quotes she had put up in the beginning of each chapter.
Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur everyday, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”- Ben Franklin
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” – Abe Lincoln
“Happiness consists in activity, it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.” – John Mason Good
I read and thought about the above quotes. My simple conclusions at the time were:
- Be happy where you are in life, with what’s happening now, with what you have now instead of making the present insufferable because of some future desire.
- Make up your mind to be happy.
- You are an adult. You fulfill all the responsibilities towards the family. But you owe it to yourself to make yourself happy too. So find what you like to do, and then do what makes you happy.
So I started on a quest to find my happiness. What I concluded again and again was that my happiness lays in my hands. I was the one responsible for bringing it into my life. Since then, I have read books, listened to people – the experts – speak about it, delved into religion, and spirituality, and exercise, and healthy behaviours and seem to be getting a little inkling about it.
As I said above, I also have a bad memory for happy moments. I used to berate myself for it till I heard research quoted that we remember our bad moments and the associated emotions more vividly than the good, happy moments. It has something to do with how we evolved (on a side note, how long can we blame evolution for our emotions and how we eat and gain weight and how we behave). So since I was forgetting all the good moments in my life, big and little, I started jotting them down in a journal. It was part gratitude, part memory journal. Going through it gives me as much happiness as going through the photo albums I still arrange each year.
As per Aristotle, the ultimate goal in life is to achieve happiness. And who am I to argue with him? So that is my other goal for this blog. I will continue reading the literature available – new and old – in the pursuit of happiness and sharing it on this blog, along with my own opinions. If this helps even one person think about how they want to embark on their journey towards happiness, then why, that would make me very HAPPY!
