In the long search for happiness
Last Saturday I went out shopping. Determined to acquire what my soul had desired, coveted and wished for long. Shopping for the most transcendent good ever. Happiness! Considering the world and all that takes place within it, I have convinced myself that there is no such a thing as happiness, however, my poor soul didn’t totally give up on happiness. Deeply it has understood that happiness is one of the major recipes in baking a delicious dish of life in this earth. Thus I went out shopping, searching for the essence of happiness. I had a handsome amount of cash that can accommodate me well in the shopping spree I set out to have.
Wishing the pendulum of luck would swing into my favor, I went out in the voyage of discovery of happiness. But little did I know that there is no a price tag for happiness. As many more others over e on, I was more than ready to buy happiness at any cost offered, even if it would mean that I have to make a deal with the devil for my soul.
Somehow I felt that it is worth every thing I have. You see I was this much desperate to be happy and I was not about to back down from acquiring it during my stay in life. I have read and heard about the grand tales and legends of happiness and ever since then I have wanted it with pure passion and intense drive. With an iron willed determination and unabashed openness I have been seeking it. Let’s just sum up saying that I needed it more than anything else in this world and was ready to pay whatever cost and value it might demand I was prepared to pay it even with the coins of dripping blood if the occasion should call for it.
Long before I understood the concept of happiness and its very essence, I have absently coveted it. Unconsciously, I have sought it. Long before I could spell out the word happiness I have desired it with all my senses coveting it with every fiber in my body. When I grow up and realized the role of happiness in one’s life, I have set out into the journey of discovery.
My adventure has taken me in to adopting many habits, searching happiness in all the wrong places. In the embrace of different lovers, in booze bottles, in the gambling activities I pursued once, in the hobbies I developed now and then but my search was to no avail. That’s when I decided to buy it, given that I can afford the price offered. I was willing to bid the highest bid in the auction of self-contentment.
Man without happiness is lost, like a ship without a compass; without the presence of happiness, everything seems to be vain, pointless. If a man can’t get a satisfaction and peace of mind that will eventually feel him with the senses of happiness, then what is living and what is life in general? If I could climb the highest ladder of success and acquired vast wealth for me, if I should make my acquaintances with kings and queens and would dine and wine with princesses and princes, but can never experience a single seconds of happiness even for a fleeting moment, then what’s the use of all this? What is this restlessness that haunts me day and night? This sinking feeling I experience when I thought that I am where I should be and have what I need in life? Why does my mind wander around in search of deep satisfaction in life? Why do I feel I have forgotten something totally ignoring an important fact when I have completed all my to do list in my life? Is it sickness, I always wondered about, or some kind of incurable disease I happen to inherent from my past?
I turn on the TVs and the breaking news of our world and see that a certain someone, one of the VIPs of our world have been found dead in his or her penthouse in a Four Season Hotel, committed a suicide after overdosing him or herself with a sleeping pills. And here I thought that sleep would come naturally to everyone especially to the haves. Why? Taking Aristotle’s saying ‘Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient’ I frown, unable to fathom the cause that could drive someone who has everything in life to commit a suicide.
You know what people? some -times I really wonder why people would be sad or broody or would go to the extremes and commit suicide in places like Las Vegas. I mean seriously, Las Vegas and all its lights and gambling places with its outrageous traditions and liberty to do anything one wants, one would think that one is in the shoes of Pinocchio when he went to that Lands of Euphoria with 24 hours of total bliss and happiness. Even in the most exotic places surrounded by people we love and care about, there is this longing deep down inside us that no money or pleasure can’t quite sate it, this void inside us that can’t be filled with wealth and success.
When I ponder about such things, I am afraid that I would end up being a very bitter woman who spent whatever fortune was attached to my name and my youthful years in the quest of finding happiness in life. I shudder with uneasiness at the mere thought of that. Oh my God I really don’t want to be like this acquaintance that I happened to know once, what was his name? Yeah! I am not at liberty to mention his name out loud, yeah but this man had everything in life with out happiness of the heart. The problem with this man is that he didn’t know how to be happy if there is a way how to be happy but nevertheless it seemed to me that his soul had somehow rebelled against him and made sure to make him miserable all the years of his life.
In situations where anyone can be considerably calm and happy, he will find means to brood and fret. He is forever coming across something that will worry him and I think because of his deprivation to peace of mind which he seem to run away at every opportunity of being happy and relaxed, things have agreed to gang up on him. The man has chosen to be miserable at his own choice and will. There is nothing the universe can do to spare him from his broody nature after providing him with good fortune and looks and I thought that these two are the ultimate factors that could make a man happy. In short the man would create a drama in his life if he can’t find something to fret about. He is what my friends would address as a ‘drama junkie’. In a Tigrigna saying, ‘Gets HemleSene’ roughly translated as a face that reflects the rainy season with no sun shinning to brighten the day. But I wonder and keep asking this question is happiness a goal? Is it something we can attain? Or is it a state of mind and a condition of a soul? What does constitute happiness? Deposits in a Swiss Bank? The best Villa in uptown? The best car in town? Beauty? Knowledge and wisdom… etc, what is it constituted of? We think that if we can achieve this or that then we would definitely be happy that all our mounting worries would vanish into the thin air. But that is not the case.
We all keep searching happiness in all the wrong places and approach it in all wrong manners. Happiness is not something we bring from outside accomplishments but rather something that springs from within, that comes up from an understanding of the soul, clarifying and identifying your purpose in this world, having a dream to pursue and being honest to you and all the people that destiny has ordained you shall live with, from the realization that life is too short to fill it with worry and hostility. In short it is accepting life as it is and living in harmony with your conscious, soul, parents, families, relatives, coworkers, community, and the universe at large. That happiness is merely the harmony of the soul with the life one is leading.
Yeah! What is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? Happiness as a topic and also as an experience has become the most intriguing and mysterious subject matter ever. It’s the last paragraph of the article but still I don’t have any clue to what happiness is and what constitutes it. I guess it will always remain to be a mystery to us.
What is happiness? I might try to answer it but it won’t be satisfactory so I am letting you differ about your answers to this great mystery of the Universe? Let each seek one’s own way to the highest, to one’s own sense of happiness, one’s ideal of happiness. So what is happiness to you? Lets each of us bring forth our own understanding and meaning of happiness. When it comes to happiness, everyone wants to have it, feel it, experience it and bask in its essence. Every one of us is ready to do almost anything to experience it. We all have the same stance, that happiness is such a transcendent good that should be sought after at all costs, till our last penny of our fortune and our last breath. But one thing is for sure and that is happiness doesn’t come from trying to pursue it but from accepting life and living with one’s soul in harmony and the grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
My search of happiness continues…..