Sukha mhanaje nakki kay asata? (What is happiness?)

The word Happiness has many synonyms. My favorite is आनंद (Ananda). Ananda is a very unique thing!  Kasha tun hi milto  ( you can seek happiness from anything). Small things like watching a kitten or taking a whiff of the petrichor...(the smell of the soil after the rains) or big things like a baby holding your hand or maybe your parents saying that they are proud of you. BOOM! Happiness. But this happiness theory is a bit difficult and a bizarre thing. Some say you have to strive hard for it or some say काय पुण्य असलं की ते घर बसल्या मिळत (What virtue it is to receive everything while sitting at home).

 As it is beautifully said when googled , Happiness lies in the joy of achievement, the thrill of creative effort. The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph, to be happy. But again, if happiness can be derived from anything why should one fight for it! And who ever said that - ' Happiness comes from within..' ही अंधश्रद्धा आहे ( this is a superstition). The HUGE INDUSTRY of happiness and positive thinking which is estimated at 10.4 Billion dollars a year which has created a fantasy that " Happiness is a REALISTIC GOAL". When initially counted, we humans had only four primary needs. And those were, FOOD, WATER, AIR and SHELTER. But with time, the number of the needs went from four to five to eight to ten to fifteen and finally to thirty. Who knows, there might be even more. But thirty sounds like a good number to stop. Truthfully speaking, humans were not designed to be happy! We were designed to survive and reproduce like every other animal in the world. Then why happiness! I honestly have never seen a koala being happy because its parents told him that he looks cute when eating leaves or something. Even monkeys share the same amount of feelings that humans feel. But again, they are monkeys. They walk on all four and fling their poop if angry or stressed.

 Back in 2008, the self help industry was valued at 11 billion dollars each year., That's a lot of books and motivational speeches that failed to help the 40 million people suffering from anxiety, the 14.8 million suffering from depression, and the 7.7 million people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. This fact does point to a  very important part - that unhappy people make companies a lot of money. Unhappy people are easy to manipulate by showing them the false hope of happiness! Postulating that there is no such thing as happiness may appear to be a purely negative sentence, but the silver lining is the knowledge that dissatisfaction is not a personal failure. If you are unhappy at times, this is not a shortcoming that demands urgent repair, as the happiness gurus would have it. Far from it. This fluctuation is, in fact, what makes you human. And thus, proving that happiness does exist in the world. But through the ways, you want it to be in your ways.

When asked to few people, what happiness is to them

One said - adding 5 pounds to the bench press and completing the set.

While the other said - a beautiful surprise!

Person 3 said watching the reruns of Two and half men or HIMYM or TBBT.

Person 4 said a beautiful vacation at Maldives or Dubai!

But the best one was - happiness to me is the sense of being alive...

ohh well. Thats it!

This is me signing out...
Au Revoir✨

Aparajitaaa_