HAPPINESS - THE WAY

One of my favorite heroes is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. An oft quoted axiom of his is “After eliminating all possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth!” So also, it is very clear that HAPPINESS cannot be found outside – in “things” as we have seen. This has been echoed by many a philosopher and it was Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, who said “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself but impossible to find it elsewhere!” There are several perspectives to this and we can discuss a few of them.

I enrolled for a spiritual retreat about a decade ago. During one week end, the teacher asked all the participants to assemble in a ground for a game. It was a simple game. We were divided into two groups – one group forming a circle and the other at the center of the circle. The objective was for the group forming the circle to throw a foot ball at the group at the center and hit them below the waist. If there was a hit, the person was out of the game. The game was played till the last man was left standing. Then the process was reversed with the groups interchanging positions. There was lot of noise, shouting, jumping, shouts of “cheating” et al. It was an assorted group with age ranging from 17 to 70 and you can imagine the commotion! (And in case you are curious, I was not nimble – was out!)

After the game, we all assembled in the hall and the teacher asked a very simple question “How many of you were happy when you were playing?”  Much to our surprise almost all hands went up. This was followed by a simple question “Why?” People came up with their own theories – but the simple reason was we were all so involved in the game that nothing else mattered. No one “got” anything tangible but were happy for no reason at all!

A few months ago, I was going for a morning walk in the beach. A husband and wife with their son – perhaps a lad 5-6 years old, were approaching me. As they came near me, the boy swung his arms in a bowling action as if to deliver a cricket ball. Instinctively I swung my arms using my “imaginary” bat and hit the ball towards mid wicket. The boy again reacted swiftly, jumped and caught the “imaginary” ball and shouted “Howzzat!” There was joyous laughter all around. What did we get now to be happy? – Not the much awaited increment or the promotion or any “thing” that we normally call valuable!

If I reflect on these two incidents it is clear that we tend to be happy when we are “involved” in our day to day life with our heart and soul. It could be any activity like gardening, reading a book, cutting vegetables or even watching a game of cricket on TV. Psychologists call this “Flow” – more of it later.

Happiness, they say, is like a cat; if you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you will find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Bertrand Russell one of the greatest thinkers of modern times talks about this very eloquently in his book “The conquest of Happiness” as follows:

“The happy man is the man who does not suffer from either of these two failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world. Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found”.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way! 

HAPPINESS - CAUSES

These days I am confronted with the inevitable question “Are you happy?” And on hearing my emphatic answer, “Yes”, most of them are a little skeptical and disappointed. They expect me to confide in them about my current state of affairs or shall I say “no affairs” and how I am bored, how no one bothers about me, how I have lost all the power and position I used to enjoy etc. I hate to disappoint them, but the truth is I am really happy.

Have you ever pondered over this question – “What is happiness?” While I was about to retire, a colleague of mine bought a fancy car – a trifle expensive one for his position in my humble opinion. So I asked him as to why he went in for such a fancy car and could have reduced his EMI by going in for a smaller car. He was quick to respond “I want to enjoy, sir!” Somewhere in the deep recesses of our mind, we all believe that external “things” – be it comforts, relationships, objects etc give us happiness. Since almost all of us believe this, there must be something in it, I guess.

Belonging to a generation that believes it is rational and of a scientific temper, I thought we should investigate this further. In scientific research they always postulate a hypothesis, collect data, analyze it and prove or disprove the hypothesis. Therefore it is only fair that we investigate this matter following the same methodology. I can think of the following hypotheses.

Hypothesis # 1 – Happiness may be an inherent nature of the “thing” (like a car or a situation etc.)

Hypothesis # 2 – The external “things” are the real cause for the happiness – that is external “things” are the cause and happiness is the effect.

Let us examine these two one by one. If, as per hypothesis # 1, a quality (like happiness) is inherent nature of an object, then it follows that the object should really give happiness all the time – at all times, at all places, for all people, in the past, present and future. For example the inherent nature of fire is to give heat. It has been hot, will continue to be hot, it burns you, me, an innocent child, during summer or winter and we can go on and on. If you subject any of the objects that we feel has an inherent quality of happiness to this test, it will surely fail. For example a thing which gives you happiness at one time does not give you happiness at other times (like a sweet for a diabetic) - forget about giving you happiness at all times. We need not even bother about the rest of the conditions. You can test this against anything that you feel gives happiness and it is bound to fail. Hence we can safely assume that happiness is not an inherent quality of a “thing”.

Now coming to the second hypothesis, say if A is the cause and B is the effect, logically it has to satisfy two conditions. The first one is whenever A is present, B should also be present. This is called the positive condition (Anvaya in Sanskrit). The second one is, whenever B is present, A should not be absent. This is called the negative condition (Vyatireka in Sanskrit). So let us apply this test. For example if wealth is the cause of happiness, then whosoever has wealth has to be happy. But that is not true. In fact most of the wealthy chaps are miserable. Similarly wherever there is happiness, wealth should not be absent. In today’s HINDU, I was reading an article about a person who cleans the fridge and Air conditioners (in the weekly column on men and women who make Chennai what it is). His parting words in the interview were “Right now, I have no debts; I am old, a little poor but am happy”. So our second hypothesis has also failed the test on both counts.

Lord Byron said “It is true but strange for truth is stranger than fiction!” Could it be that happiness is not in any of these external "things"? Is that a possibility?