Life was so simple for our grandparents. If you try to understand their lifestyle, they were so much content in what they had in life. They use to find happiness in small things in every day to day life; never much thought about future and lived in present. Life has changed a lot since then. The moment you are born, the never ending race to secure your future begins. Even before you start your schooling, your parents have already decided what you have to be in life. If its India, then you have only two options; either doctor or engineer. And with the start of IPL, I guess many parents consider Cricket as a career too these days :)
You are always told throughout your childhood that if you don’t get good marks then your future is bleak and you won’t be Happy and will have to do a clerical or labour job all your life. You grow up with the same mindset thinking that if you become a doctor or engineer, you will get a good job and you will be Happy. In this journey, little you give any consideration to the real aspect of what happiness is all about. Now that I have become an engineer and settled in life, I should be happy according to the theorem set by our parents. But is that always the case for many of us?
I guess happiness is beyond being successful in life. Even a highly successful person in this world need not be happy. As rightly said by the great saint Ramdas
“Jagi sarv sukhi asa kon ahe vichare mana tuch shodhun pahe”
(No one in this entire world is completely happy)
When I was in India, all my friends were abroad and for me they all were happy in their life. Now after more than three years in UK, I feel I was happier in India than here. Now this state of mind is called as “Ajun Ajun” (it’s a Marathi word for more. And its my own invented term for state of mind :) ). If you achieve something in life, you start a new search for something better than what you have and keep chasing all your life and forget to enjoy the current state of achievement.
All I want to say is be happy in whatever you have because what you have many people struggle their whole life even to reach close to it. While writing this, all the time just one song was going on in my mind. It’s a Marathi song sung by Prashant Damle in Eka Lagnachi Ghost Natak. “Mala Sanga Sukh Mhanje nakki kai asta”. You would like it.
