COLOURS - About Happiness

1. About Happiness

1.1 Let us start at the very beginning

It always helps to begin a quest by identifying one’s personal goal in life.
Each of us today lives such a fast paced life. One rarely takes the time to step back and view one’s life with a zoomed out perspective.

So what is your goal in life?
Have you set the short term and long term targets to achieve your goal?
Have you accomplished any of the targets that you had set?
Or has your goal changed as the years went by?

You can use these articles to introspect on your life and question its direction.
Let us try to analyse what is the primary objective of any human being’s life. If you look around, you will find that all of us look different, we come from diverse backgrounds, we have distinct personalities, yet there is one aspect common in every one of us.
The one common aspiration that links each and every human being, regardless of faith, gender and social or financial status is the desire to be happy. And in this quest our species is not alone. Every living creature, from the tiniest ant to the majestic elephant seeks happiness. Let’s take the example of an ant. It will scuttle away from a distressing situation and run to a pleasurable one. So if it comes close to fire it will flee, but will move eagerly towards a little heap of sugar.
If we think about it, don’t we all endeavour to prolong pleasurable situations? If we are not working hard to derive happiness, then we at least make attempts to avoid unpleasant situations. For example, we quickly repair the TV should it be out of order as we do not want to miss the enjoyment of watching our favourite programs.

 1.2 Reality of life

Spiritual research has shown that worldwide, the average human being is happy only 30% of the time, while 40% of the time he or she is unhappy. The remaining 30% of the time, a person is in a neutral state where he or she does not experience happiness or unhappiness. For example, when a person is walking on the road or doing some mundane task and not thinking happy or unhappy thoughts.

One of the contributing factors to this dilemma of more unhappiness in our lives is our educational system. The system is set up to teach students a vast array of subjects, but it does not teach students the subject of lasting happiness in its curriculum. We are not formally taught how to be happy irrespective of the situation we may face in life.

You could have a suave gentleman with an impressive business card who feels depressed and suicidal should he face some kind of financial loss. You could have a woman who is applauded at her workplace for her tremendous contribution to the growth of an organization, but who is victimized by a spouse who belittles her and plays on the fact that she feels emotionally insecure.
One studies hard and appears for many exams to get a head start in life, to get that perfect job that would ensure a comfortable lifestyle, so as to attain happiness.
But are we looking in the right direction? Does a job really ensure we are happy? Does being a family person always ensure that we are happy? As much as people would love to be happy, we find that unhappiness plagues the uneducated as much as it plagues the highly educated.
So maybe we need to explore new avenues that would give us non-stop happiness, regardless of our worldly situation.
Now some of you may be thinking, “I do not think this is for me, as I am generally a happy person.”
To that individual, we would say that these articles are for you for the following three reasons:

• Life is in a constant state of flux. You cannot guarantee that all aspects of your life will remain constant and unchanging - such as your job situation, your financial situation, your family, etc.
  
• You need to learn how to develop a technique that allows you to build great reservoirs of inner strength to face bad times, as one never knows when in life one will turn the corner and be presented with a not-so-nice life situation.
  
• There is a saying, “Don’t wait to dig a well when you are thirsty, rather dig it well in advance so that when you are thirsty, you have water to drink.”