Finding happiness

It is a fact – we never find happiness, rather we make it. The process of self-actualisation – discovering ourselves, what we want to be, doing things that bring meaning and contentment – paves the way to real happiness.

Someone has rightly said, ‘you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.’

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It is a fact – we never find happiness, rather we make it. The process of self-actualisation – discovering ourselves, what we want to be, doing things that bring meaning and contentment – paves the way to real happiness.

Everyone is striving towards happiness, whether in the pursuit of money, career or family-life. In this mad race, the real thing slips right through our fingers and we later realise that feeling of unhappiness in the pit of our stomach still nags us.

After years of struggle, one realises true happiness lies in eliminating selfishness, and that it’s only us who can make ourselves happy. Every act of ours that brings a smile on someone’s face and takes away importance from ‘the self’ leads to self-abnegation.

Serving others frees us from bonds of egoism and leads to a state where there is no ‘I’ but ‘thou’.

Another fact in the pursuit of happiness is that our acts of morality, help to others etc, is not going to help the world progress. The show is going on by itself, not on account of us. Scientifically too, the sum total of energies of pleasure and pain experienced on this earth is the same. We cannot add happiness or pain to it. We just push it from one side to another and this is how the cycle of ‘samsara’ goes on. This realisation helps us to be happy in the real sense. The moment we have this thought, all our problems seem to vanish, and peace dawns.