Are you chasing happiness? | Sunday Observer

Are you chasing happiness?

9 October, 2022

Everybody knows what happiness means and there is no need to define it. However, achieving happiness is fraught with many difficulties. The great German poet and philosopher, Goethe, gave the following recipe for happiness.

According to him, there are nine requisites for happy living. In the first place, you need good health to enjoy happiness; wealth to support your needs; physical strength to battle with difficulties; grace to confess your sins and forsake them; patience to toil until some good is accomplished; charity to see some good in your neighbours; enough love to be useful and helpful to others; faith to achieve success in life; and hope to remove fears concerning the future.

Goethe’s recipe for success may appear to be a tall order, but it is a sensible guide for anyone to achieve and enjoy happiness. Charles Darwin has added a rider: “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps that part of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use.” The loss of such tastes may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Even those who have never heard of Goethe or Charles Darwin would ask you: “Are you happy in your job or marriage? How many people would say they are happy in their jobs or marriages? They would simply say, “Yes. No. It depends on what you mean.” Can you think of a day when you were really happy? Were you happy when you were born? Probably not, because you came into this world with a loud cry! Were you happy when you fell in love with your dream girl or prince charming? You will say, “Yes, of course.” It served me right when I posed the question to someone who had joked his way through life. His answer surprised me. “When I think of happiness I usually think of something extraordinary – pinnacle of sheer delight.” Such pinnacles get rarer as we grow old.

Hide and seek

This brings us to another aspect of happiness. Look at a child playing hide and seek with his friends. All of them are highly excited and happy. Then he takes part in a school play. That too gives him extreme happiness. At times even children may experience low levels of happiness. But they are rare occasions. Children do not stay in such a position long because they become teenagers. In the teenage years, the concept of happiness changes drastically.

Their happiness depends on love, popularity or their social outlook. They will be crestfallen when they are rejected by members of the opposite sex. But they soon enjoy ecstasy when they find their life partners. Although love and marriage would bring happiness to your life, they arrive with a risk of losing it. Your love may not last and then you have to start chasing happiness once again.

For adults, happiness is something complicated. No adult would say, “I am happy as a lark.” Most adults define happiness as their capacity for enjoyment. However, you can enjoy only what you have. It can be money, fame, or a loved one. When you lose them, you become unhappy once again. Those who really feel happy should add up their little moments of pleasure. Sometimes you may be happy if you have the house to yourself for a day. Then you can do your reading and writing uninterrupted. However, be ready to be disturbed when others return home.

Husbands and wives have rare moments of intimacy. This is the very reason for married couples to move away from their parental home. They want to be away from the prying eyes of their parents and siblings. However, when children are born the newly married couple need their parents’ assistance. Then their happiness and moments of intimacy take a backseat.

Love and excitement

When your life gets more and more complicated, you have to make an effort to find happiness. You always expect happiness to turn up at any moment. When the telephone rings, you feel that someone is thinking of you. Some people go for a drive or a walk. While walking you look at happy couples on the green whispering soft but nothing. You remember your own days full of love and excitement.

Psychologists tell us that to be happy you need a blend of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I doubt whether my grandmother who raised half a dozen children was engaged in a satisfying job. But she never complained. It may be that she was happy with what she was doing. Perhaps she did not expect life to be very different.

Chasing happiness will never cease until you die. Life is full of pressure to succeed in any particular area. Whatever you do, you have to enjoy some degree of happiness. When there is no happiness in what you do, everything becomes a dull routine. As you grow older, you equate happiness with wealth and success in your career. But you fail to notice that those who have wealth and success in their career too are not so happy.

You have to redefine the concept of happiness to remain happy. Do not think that happiness is something that happens to you. It is about how you perceive what happens to you. Try to find a positive for every negative and view a setback only as a challenge. Wishing for something you do not have is quite sensible, but to be happy you have to know the art of enjoying what you have and what you do. There is no need to chase happiness because it may be lying around the corner!

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