Happiness

Happiness is a highly coveted thing. All our actions are ultimately targeted at attaining happiness. Yet, we find that we aren't happy all the time. Feelings of true happiness are scattered between several feelings of being 'just okay' and some feelings of being 'not okay'. That is probably why these feelings of true happiness are valued so much. I'm sure everyone must have experienced the down in the dumps feeling when we feel that everything in our lives is going exactly as it shouldn't. We are reminded of how insignificant we are. Really, just a barely visible, teeny tiny dot in this infinite universe. We feel helpless. Like it's us against the world. We fear that whatever we do will never be good enough and that eventually, we will fade away into anonymity without any major accomplishments. Lyrics from The Rembrandts' song 'I'll be there for you' (Made famous by the hit TV show F.R.I.E.N.D.S.) comes to mind: 'And it's never been your day, your week, your month or even your year...' It seems to have become the soundtrack of our life. 

That is a pretty bleak picture, isn't it? It's a good thing this feeling is not permanent. How long the feeling lasts depends on us. We could allow despair to get a firm grip on us or we could wriggle free of its clutches. Whenever we feel blue, there are things we can do to feel better temporarily. Here are some of the things that have worked in alleviating my misery, in no particular order:

1) Dancing! I've never been much of a dancer, so when my friends pulled me along for a DJ night at work, I was apprehensive. Initially I stood there, very awkwardly, marveling at the others who were dancing so effortlessly. What finally made me join in was the fact that, everyone there was dancing which such abandon, as if it was just them and the music, without caring who was watching. It took me longer than them to shed my self-consciousness. But I did choose a simple step and started dancing. It was getting dark and soon, there were only the flashing, colourful lights to illuminate the scene. So that was a plus.(:-P) I realised that while dancing, I forgot all my worldly worries, even if it was for a short while. It was an incredible feeling.

2) Music. There are some songs which can lift our spirits no matter what mood we are in. All we have to do is, turn the music up, preferably in surround sound, and lose ourselves in it. There are songs that we fall in love with in the first hearing itself. And then there are songs which don't seem extraordinary initially, but which grow on us with time. As the music reaches a crescendo, we can feel our spirits soaring too, and melancholy takes the back seat. This happens to me whenever I listen to any of Evanescence's songs. If we get to listen to live music, there is nothing like it. I had been to a concert recently and the atmosphere was completely electric: The loud thumping music, floodlights exhibiting the Tyndall Effect in the night sky, people singing along and cheering the musicians who were enjoying themselves just as much as the audience.

3) Reading. This has always been my preferred mode of escapism. Whenever I'm down, I turn to authors like Douglas Adams, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, in order to regain my sanity. The works of these authors are so rib ticklingly funny that they can pull us out of the worst of moods. They are liberally sprinkled with figures of speech like 'paraprosdokians' (Greek word meaning, beyond expectation). It is a figure of speech in which the ending of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader to reframe or reinterpret the first part. (Definition from Wikipedia) An example: "Trin Tragula–for that was his name–was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot…" (Douglas Adams). Then there are some sentences which are so exquisitely bizarre, that one can't help but burst out laughing: "Flying is the  art or knack of throwing oneself at the ground and missing!" (Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams) 
"Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying: Don't look now, but this is exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth. "(Uncle Fred in Springtime, P. G. Wodehouse)

4) Doing something for others.  can go a long way in making us happy too. It doesn't have to be fancy gifts. Even simple gestures like smiling at people and greeting them, writing letters to loved ones in this age of texting, just listening to people, can be very uplifting. 

5) Being grateful. This is suggested in almost all self help books. And it does work. Things are almost never as bad as we think they are. Counting our blessings can help us view our problems from a different perspective. 

6) Doing things we are passionate about. It could be anything from singing, writing, cooking to outdoor activities like trekking, playing, shopping. Anything that makes us glad we're alive.

The feeling of being down in the dumps comes with a feeling of helplessness. This helplessness is because we allow life to happen to us. Instead of being proactive, we react to life. In the ocean that is life, we try to fight the waves instead of swimming along with them. We can't control everything that happens to us. Trying to do so would be futile, but there is something we can always do to better our current situation. Just doing that much can be enough to make us feel better and can get rid of the helplessness. There is no real key to happiness, like there is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. However, with some effort, we can make happiness a habit. We would be surprised to find that the simplest of things can make us quite happy: watching silhouettes of birds flying in the colour changing dusk sky, eating a hot meal, making a child laugh, singing in the shower at the top of our voices, watching a cricket match at home with the entire family! 

So here’s to happiness.

Picture courtesy: http://brucerosenstein.com/tag/happiness/