Why Does Happiness Elude Us?

Whoever I meet or speak to on the phone nowadays waxes eloquent on the need to be happy, to live one’s life to the full, be content, identify needs and wants because who knows, ‘we are here today, gone tomorrow.’ True that.

The pandemic has taught us that life is ephemeral. COVID apart, young people succumbing to ailments such as heart disease and other lifestyle-related problems has made all of us all the more insecure about our very existence. Age alone is no longer the cause of death.

Sadly, happiness is not coming naturally to us. We are all making a conscious effort to be happy. The hearty laughter is missing. We are all pretending to be happy. Children are unhappy because they can’t go out to play, teenagers are trapped at home and feel stifled, young professionals are reeling under the burden of work at home and managing relationships, women are busy multi-tasking, someone doesn’t know how to make ends meet, someone else is irked because he or she has a problem of plenty and there is little one can indulge in due to travel restrictions in pandemic times.

Even as we find ourselves looking for solutions, spiritual gurus have filled the gap, some genuine, some fake. No offence to them, there were only a few of them around even ten to fifteen years back. They dole out advice right from when, how to and many times to have sex, to what to eat, how to talk to your boss, treat animals, how to bring up children etc., because somewhere, we showed our inadequacy. So, where there is demand there is supply. Period. Anything more on this matter may border on the controversial.

Death, poverty, sickness, ill-health are all a part of the package of humanity. Whenever humans have despaired, one among the millions has emerged to show the right path. That is how we had saints like Buddha, Guru Nanak and others. Then in the new age, we had Godmen and today we have spiritual gurus. Except for the Godmen, the inherent message of all of them is to find happiness within. But we, mere mortals, seek it outside. That is our biggest fallacy. We are more followers than doers. We rarely make an effort to empower ourselves. We want an external force to do it. That, my dear Watson, is not possible. No sermonising here. Just a simple fact. Take it or leave it.

But humanity has never had it so bad, you might ask and we are living in tough times. No doubt, we are. But there have been plagues, pandemics and wars before and the stakes were high in accordance with those times. Even though we were not as well-equipped then as we are now, we emerged like a phoenix from its ashes. The only difference between then and now, as I see it is, we had heroes both in war and in peace, who could draw individual strength and turn it into a collective force.

Sadly, we don’t have such heroes today. And individually, we are too embroiled in our respective lives to take collective responsibility, which in turn doesn’t serve the larger purpose. As a result, we are all suffering at some level or the other.

Again, at the cost of sermonising, the solution lies in drawing upon our inner strength as a key to happiness. It is by no means an easy exercise and requires willpower. Turning to spirituality is an option, so long as it does not come from a state of being passive. In the end, we all have to take responsibility for our actions.