August 1, 2017

Happiness - within and around (extended)

Hello! Long time no see right? Hehe, was busy in a couple of tours around the Indian Sub-continent. :D

Well, this post is non-technical and more of a philosophical sort-of, as I have been traveling a lot..and maybe that is when you keep thinking about such stuffs when you gaze over the open skies! :D
This post is neither intended for brainwashing you, nor dominating your mind with my thoughts.
It is just my sole experience, and I hope that you may agree with all or at least some of my thoughts here.
        Sometimes you feel that being rich is the only way of being happy, and for that you work all your life to earn that MONEY which you apparently think that you need it, to be happy.
Don't you think you get many moments of happiness during this journey of yours of getting rich ?
Uhm, let me create a scenario according to your logic of staying happy(ier,iest)

    Assume that you want to buy your dream car and that costs around 30 lakhs (Hey..lets be practical here, and lets ignore your unrealistic range of car worth crores, in this scenario).
So now, you have 30 lakhs, and you are good to go with your dream car.
Next what ?
You still would have dilemmatic thoughts as to buy the car with all the 30 lakhs you have, or settle for something of lesser cost and save the remaining money!

    If you go reluctantly for the 1st choice and go for buying the car with all the money you have, what about the cost to be incurred on the car again ? Fuel, servicing, oh yea.. a good garage for the car ?
Now you start thinking about switching to 'ALL Brand' level, meaning "Everything of a HIGH market value, or standard" and you crave for a good audio system in the car, renovating your place to match the standard of your car.
The point is, you are NOT enjoying the presence of your car and thinking about the other things now.
You are even planning to arrange for a good garage for your car, the audio system, racing decals, and what not!
    Lets assume that you had your car all set-up with the latest audio system and all those seem-to-be-good stuff somehow by your salary, etc.. will you be happy now ?
If you think that you will be happy, its great! Sadly reality is not that way. You will crave for a better car sooner or later.. but for sure.
Statistically, you will be happy for a month, or a couple of them.. and get USED to the comfort and will seek better comfort or a HIGHER standard.
This is a continual process and this keeps on repeating until and unless your desires are controlled.


    Here comes an incident of my life, wherein I realised another fact about happiness.
This happended when I was in my 4th standard.
My parents had come to my school to take some documents pertaining to application of my Passport, and it was all BROADCASTED in my class by my class teacher that I was going to Saudia Arabia and my passport application is being filed.
Everybody was 'all smiles' in my class and suddenly I felt being RICH! It was unexpected for me who never left Hyderabad until then and now was going out of country. :D
        This doesn't end here. Everybody at home also made me feel the same, and I was really very happy and tried behaving in the best manner (something of that sort ) and all that drama.
        I don't remember when this thought of me going to Saudia Arabia disappeared from my mind until my 9th class when actually I went to Saudia Arabia for the first time.
What does this mean now ? I hadn't been to Saudia in my 4th standard itself but the thought itself made me happy, and I already felt as-if I was there.
       A survey also says that people are lot more happier in planning their vacation than going on the vacation itself.
The above survey makes my point stronger now, ain't it ? ;)

    Uhm, I just remembered an incident in my life, which I consider an important event in my life.
I was in my 9th standard and had gone to Saudia Arabia for a vacation.
In earlier days there, I used to go shopping with my papa and was limited to buying few items (yea.. because my frequency of shopping was more :P). 
I used to grab all that was wanted by me. :P

    Then came a day when my papa told me,"Take WHATEVER you want today!"
What next ? Theoretically if anyone tells you so.. you never waste this chance and bump into all nooks and corners of the mall and grab everything you ever wanted to buy.. but on contrary I was PUZZLED as to WHAT I NEED and WHAT TO BUY, as I had freedom to buy everything I wanted that day.
    No! I wasn't getting emotional or I did even think of the prices, no.. nothing! I was a 14 year old kid and was as every other kid who craves for toys and all that fancy shopping!
Then came the enlightenment! I realised that only the words of my papa which literally meant that he can buy ANYTHING for me were more than enough for me.. and equivalent to that ANYTHING.
    Since that day I had a change of my mind and realised that happiness is NOT in BUYING things, it is basically in thinking that YOU can buy it.

    Now, lets assume a different scenario, directly related to MONEY.
During my years of Graduation, my group CliQue had planned for a party at the end of Graduation and we thought of contribution of 5000 Indian Rupees from each one in the group, that would be 35k in total and planned to spend it lavishly at the Taj Hotel.
We would receive scholarship from Government, and so thought we will start saving that for the party.
After completion of our Graduation, though we had a lot more than the planned money, we were satisfied with having "paratha with aaloo" in a local restaurant and tea, roughly amounting to 500 Rupees max.


Let me imagine what would happen if someone would really think of spending all that 35k.
I bet they wouldn't, well atleast according to me who had lived that moment.

    
Lets consider you really feel that you WILL spend that money no-matter what, and without any second thoughts..
Okay! You spent all that without second thought.. had gala time for an hour, a couple of hours, or say 1 day..!
    Obviously! You would have enjoyed a lot and yeah.. it would have obviously made you HAPPY too.. but what were the elements of happiness basically there ? Your money?

Obviously NO! If money would make you happy, you wouldn't spend them at all! :)
    You were happy because you probably weren't ALONE. You were sharing the enjoyable moments with the people you LIKE, LOVE, or CARE.
So basically YOUR happiness was NOT by your money, but by the HAPPINESS of the people you were with.
    So, the gist of this post is that real happiness is in happiness of the people who matter to you.
Keep spreading happiness, you will never regret this! :)
Hope this post did leave some impact on you!

I firmly believe that what can be bought, can be eventually bought.Afterall it requires only money which can be earned someday. Don't worry about that. Worry about the things which cannot be 'bought'.

Having said that, time for me to wrap it up.

Thanks for reading. Take care! :)

Regards,
itsmeRiF