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!