I got up... and turned my computer on again…. thinking I would continue watching ancient episodes of that old comedy Mind Your Language on Youtube again. Most comedies these days were from the US. I missed dry British wit and humour. They were more intelligent, and made you chuckle and smile rather than laugh out loud. But I didn't. Instead
I typed out a search… H.a.p.p.i.n.e.s.s .....
There was a wikipedia article on Happiness. I skipped it. I wasn't looking for knowledge. I was looking for wisdom. I was looking for... Happiness.. or rather the key to it, because at that moment, as I lay alone in my bed, with no one to talk to, no one to share, no one to care, I felt that happiness had suddenly gone missing in my life. I was happy. WAS. And now that it's missing, I wasn't sure how to find it again. So many others around me were unhappy too.... I suddenly became so aware of how universal this pursuit really is...... everyone seems to be looking for an answer. Everyone wants to know how to be happy. We’ve all been happy before at some point in our lives. But I don’t think we all know exactly how we became happy each and every time. And the funny thing is, we wonder more about happiness when we’re not experiencing it.
Next in line were websites with hundreds and hundreds of quotes on happiness, and I clicked on it. Maybe the wisdom of generations of old would help... maybe a well put quote will help me see the light. God knows how much I needed it at that moment.
I suddenly laughed to myself. "I got a quote...." I thought to myself.. "The answer to all of life's question.. is GOOGLE." said I. Because here I was trying to google my way to happiness... and the humour of it all wasn't lost to me even in my current state. It wasn't THAT funny, but I laughed anyway. I think I would have been clinically depressed by now, if I didn't so stubbornly cling on to my sense of humour. You don't need to be happy to still have a sense of humour do you?
I poured over quotes over quotes over quotes. You'd think the more wise words you hear, the more enlightened you get. But the more I read, the more I confused I felt. Because some quotes contradict each other, others reinforce the rest... But every single one felt and sounded right and true. Which truth am I supposed to embrace anyway? Which truth have I earned for myself? (that again is from another quote I read).....
Seek & You shall Not Find.
The first thing that hit me was…. it seems I wasn’t supposed to be looking for happiness. You can have it... as long as you don't try to grab it. Some quotes that I read:
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. ~Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus
The American constitution says that everyone has the right to pursuit happiness. But there were 2 problems. One, I wasn’t American. Second, it just seems rather tragic to me that the moment you try to find happiness, you lose it all together. It is only human nature to want to pursue the things we want most in life, how then can we say we should stop? It’s counter-intuitive. Aren’t the things you truly want in life worth struggling and fighting for?
Stop whining, Start Living
They tell me the secret to happiness is to just focus on living life. If you get so caught up with knowing and gathering the ingredients to happiness, you might just miss tasting when it is there to taste. They said:
If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Beran Wolfe
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. ~Iris Murdoch
Get on with life. If we hang around too long whining about how unhappy we are, the more likely we will actually miss out on living life which pretty much guarantees us that as sure as you will experience pain and suffering, you will experience joy and happiness.
Perspective, perspective, perspective.
Other people said happiness is all in the head. It's a state of mind. It's us constantly realigning our way of thinking till it looks just right. Kind of like how you can only see a rainbow from certain angles and not from others. If you can’t see the rainbow, it’s because you’re looking at it wrong. If you can’t be happy, it’s because you’re not having the right perspective. They tell me if I don’t learn how to be happy in spite what life’s circumstances are, then I’m pretty much screwed.
You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance. ~Lavetta Sue Wegman
We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
But I felt that as much as we can sometimes try to be happy despite our circumstances, as much as we try to realign our angles to see the rainbow (and thus seeing happiness), you still need the freaking rain, and some sunshine right? This is out of our hands. You can’t force yourself to be happy when there are genuine grievances in life right? It’d be almost as if we were being nonchalant about our grievances, and by extension, about life itself. If being happy meant we can still act like we don’t have a care in the world in the midst of it all, then we have ceased to care at all (about anyone and everyone). In which case, I’d rather be miserable.
It's right under your nose
Some said it's about being grateful for the things and people you have around you... which I think is closer to my own heart. They tell you life is not something you need to walk out the door in search of... but something that grows right beneath your feet.
If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door. ~Robert Brault
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault,
I felt comforted by this. Perhaps it’s not that hard to be happy after all. Perhaps happiness was there to be found, right around us? There are times when I truly am happy over the slightest of gestures and smallest of things. But what about right now? Where is it? Or wait, have I not looking at it with the right perspective? I was starting to get annoyed with this whole business of happiness. Maybe happiness is over rated. Maybe this guy was correct when he said:
The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson
From their eyes into your heart.
Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so.- Robert G. Ingersoll
Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. ~Gretta Brooker Palmer
But finally, someone said that true happiness is found not through our own personal satisfaction and joy, but through others we are able to make happy. It's as if the happiness can only arrive in our hearts through the smile and laughter of the people we make happy. And this resonated the strongest within my own heart. I thought back on all the moments in my life that made my heart soar …… and found that it was at moments when I looked at their smiling faces and light up eyes, and knew that I had something to do with it. It’s impossible to make someone else happy and not be doing the same to yourself in the process.
Wisdom overload...
I had enough. After finding that last few ones… I closed my computer, and lied down in bed again. I don’t think that many meaningful quotes are meant to be digested all at once. How many truths can a person embrace anyway? My whole search for wisdom of happiness turned into a freaking academic exercise. I felt more enlightened, but actually more miserable. I now had a clearer perception about happiness but was none the happier. True to the very first thing I read above.So much for Google being the answer to all of life's questions I guess....
Perhaps I should have just spoken to someone. I'd probably have felt better. Or perhaps…. the secret of happiness was just as simple as sticking to watching British sitcoms.
:-S
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