Erich Fromm once said,
happiness is not a gift of gods. It is achieved out of one’s own inner
productiveness. He who executes his role just as a child plays a game for the
sake of play, enjoys the best of both the worlds. Unfortunately, as we grow
older and wiser, it is reported that we often lose that ‘imagination’ with
which a child is often found transforming commonplaces into the priceless. As Wordsworth said, children come into this world
‘trailing clouds of glory’; with a pure mind— tabula rasa. We also often watch children ‘being alive to the
moment’ and display a fresh quality of freedom, of “letting themselves go” —all
with curiosity, and yet we fail to realize this simple truth: that happiness is more ‘in
being spontaneous’ as the children are.
According to Aristotle, it is
the people, who are endowed with self-sufficiency, unweariedness and capacity
for rest, and intellect, that find happiness in every act of theirs. “Every
normal function of life holds some delight”, said historian William Durant. It
is those people who cultivate a liking for themselves, of course for true
reasons, that succeed in being happy. But
there are often those unhappy people who never hold themselves responsible for
their condition, but instead blame their jobs, marriages, or the cruelty of
fate. Such people will have no warmth to give, and are destined to be
frustrated and confused.
The secret of life is perhaps
never explained fully by any seer or philosopher. It always remains new, to be
understood by us, to be realized anew everyday. And ‘happiness’ is not on sale
to buy and consume’. Happiness is to be experienced. And no one knows from
where this emanates, as each has his/her own perception of happiness. For
instance, Emerson said: “the only place where I feel the joy of eminent domain
is in my woodlot. My spirits rise whenever I enter it. I can spend the entire
day there with hatchet or pruning-shears making paths, without a remorse of
wasting time. I fancy the birds know me, and even the trees make little
speeches or hint at them….” This only reaffirms What Socrates said: ‘Happiness is a state of mind’.
Tolstoy has once pithily observed:
‘if you want to be happy, be’. And that’s what the quest for happiness is all
about. One such search of our predecessors says that a frame of mind of “all in
one and one in all” paves the way for happiness—
Behave
with others as you would with yourself.
Look
upon all the living beings as your bosom friends, for in all of them there
resides one soul.
All are
but a part of that universal soul.
A
person who believes that all are his soul-mates and loves them all alike, never
feels lonely.
The
divine qualities of forgiveness, compassion and service will make him lovable
in the eyes of all.
He will
experience intense joy throughout his life.
—Yajur.40.6
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