Talking Shop: Happy thoughts

"It’s not about being happy all the time, or being sure of all your choices.

It’s about knowing life is precious, even when it’s tough.”

—Topher Kearby

For nearly 250 weeks, I have been given the responsibility of dadoing this page, discussing with you the burning issues that confront us, with deep thoughts and deeper words intended to make you do some thinking too. I have done that too often for my own good, for I feel listless today. Let’s face it, times are tough. But it is just such adverse times that scream at any scribe worth his/her ink and insist: “Make the readers forget the black and red. Let them explore and enjoy other colours and feelings too.” Today, we listen to that reasoning and, thus, no doom and gloom for you this Monday.

For a while, we’ll forget electoral bonds and what they portend—that we are all abject failures in our own professional lives, not having amassed in our lifetime even a fraction of what a chosen few have nonchalantly given away to charity or to appease whatever djinn is calling the shots. We’ll also move beyond redoubtable legalese and draft legislations that are oft-proposed and always soft-passed, redefining the ground rules that we commoners live by. We shan’t speak of runaway trains or their misanthropist locomotives, much as we won’t dare think of ‘jail ki salaakhein’ or those who find themselves on their wrong side. We will utter not a single word on when our nation gained freedom, for the date and year keep changing anyway. Today, we shall only think happy thoughts.

What is this enigma?

Happy is that which is distanced from bad news and other balderdash. Today, having decided to be positive, let’s be borderline bolistic as well. After all, life’s ultimate goal is to be happy. Let me be naughty and chauvinistic too, and ask what it is that makes a man truly happy. The answer has to be wine, women, cars and sumptuous food, not necessarily in that order. Let’s focus today on these happy things and ensure that the smile is not wry and that it reaches our eyes and warms the cuckolds of our hearts. Since women feature oh so prominently in men living (pro)creative lives, it is imperative to highlight their happy list too—it’s the same as that of men, with the cars driving out and zesty wardrobes vrooming in, the boot stuffed aplenty with a home-makers’ penchant. After all, the fairer sex is the stronger one.

For a bit, let’s get confused and understand happiness, which is a slippery slope and a concept tough to get a handle on. The only description that dictionaries and x-paedias agree on is that “happiness is equated with pleasure and contentment, not to be confused with joy, ecstasy, bliss or other intense feelings”. One particularly cerebrally-blessed individual even spoke of the four types of happiness—Laetus, which comes from material objects; Felix, which our ego stokes and strokes; Beatitudo, which comes from doing good for others and making the world a better place; and Sublime Beatitudo, which is the ‘ultimate and perfect happiness’.

I have also been informed by a website that happiness has five Ps—positivity, peace, perseverance, passion and prosperity. The lesson here is that to find happiness, we need to rediscover our life and forget the damned Internet and its convoluted and self-sanctioned, sanctified explanations.

Little joys & pleasures

Sitting on a roadside dhaba and sipping milky tea from a chipped cup can be happiness, as can feeling the wind in your hair when you roll down the car window near a beach or in the mountains. Feeling the kiss of raindrops on your face or the husky whisper of a snowflake descending on you can be ecstatic too. Walking a misty road early in the morning or staggering back home late at night after a particularly extended bout of celebrations can also lead to near-ultimate nirvana. Wearing a carefully-orchestrated ensemble of clothing and checking yourself out in the mirror, or looking at your own photograph from five decades ago can provide happiness too. Achieving a life-long goal can be as rewarding and pleasing as the wonder of the painful journey that made it all possible.

Seeing a loved one approach and then embrace you can provide happiness, as can tightly cuddling your own little one when he/she is cooing. Looking at the perfect scores on your marksheet can be as much a source of happiness as looking at the scorecard of a sports engagement that you shone in. Having your canine or feline baby jump on you when you enter home can be as (if not more) pleasurable than your better half doing the same. Childhood memories revived with now-old friends can be as blissful as getting all dolled up to meet new people and creating new memories. Seeing a loved one happy over something you made happen can be as much a source of happiness as that same thing happening to you.

The nuts and bolts

In a nutshell, happiness often stems more from smaller things, not the bombastic and extravagant achievements that reek of seedy money and heady wealth. Mind you, I am no pissant myself and love my cushy leather recliner, but would happily trade that in for lying down on a bale of hay and gazing at the stars, with my cats and dog licking my face while my woman laughs herself to near stomach-ache over my middle-aged shenanigans and fast-approaching senility.

“Don’t ever be ashamed of loving the strange things that make your weird little heart happy,” journalist and author Elizabeth Gilbert said. I couldn’t agree more—to each his own, even if only to ensure that the screen of our mobile phones and tablets is finally turned upside down, turning the frown into a lovely smile. We can also be happy when we are old enough to realize that life is like that, filled with travails and tests that put us through a plunger designed to bring out the best in us, much as gold emerges out of a smelter—sometimes excruciatingly slow in its flow. We don’t need to watch morons on television or megalomaniacs screaming their cacophonic rants into a school of microphones to realize that we are better off without them (and with time, we shall be too). After all, to see the rainbow, you have put up with the rain. Of course, the latter can be blissful too.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal