Happiness is in the finding joy within

Everyone wants to be happy. As a child, my idea of happiness was to get to eat ice cream every single day. In my teenage days, I was happy whenever I got more marks than my friends. In college, I carved for attention of the “One”. As soon as I started working, it was on getting more and more highly paid job.

Our idea of being happy thus changes with time. I am now married, well settled in Job, my “targets” for being happy include buying new house, jewellery or car or getting a promotion. But are these ideas of happiness constant?

With constant analysis, I found no, these so called Targets of happiness are very short lived and variable. They are accomplished as soon as we get them. For example, after owning a Flat, a new apartment won’t bring that much of joy or thrill which I got while buying the first one. Thus these things don’t make us happy every single day of our life. They merely add a feather to our life style or simply make our life easier.

After lots of observation I found that the best way to be always happy is to stop searching for it, because our source of happiness lies within us. As “Beauty is in eye of the beholder”, “Happiness is in the mind of the seeker”. Joy is not the state of our Physical, monetary or material well being but it is actually a state of our mental well being.

If you look forward to a simple morning tea with the person you love, then it is the real cause of your happiness, as your heart seeks for it.  If you carve for watching a movie again and again or playing a sport or developing a hobby, it is the source of your Joy. Planting the flowers and watching them grow and survive, thrill me more than owning a piece of jewellery, every single bloom, brings more smiles on my face than my every ride on my new car (And I am not discrediting the memory of the First ride!!!).

Though the idea of Joy, vary from person to person, most of the human beings are happier in the basic things. People are happy when they meet friends and share Coke and Pizza with them, rather than eating out alone. And these sources of happiness are actually constant. They never deplete or the joy of having them never deplete. They get converted into our most sacred memories, which we would like to remember forever.

Thus next time if we feel that we are somehow unhappy, let’s analyse the source of happiness we are seeking. If it is actually short lived, then our regret for not having them is actually foolish.  And if it is actually that joy which is within us, we should strive for it as it will live with us forever.

 - Bhavna