Seeking Happiness

Seeking Happiness

I was amused to see my text book, “MARRIAGES, FAMILIES, AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS” by Brian, Stacey, and Carl, starting with the first chapter as, “Seeking Happiness through love and Intimacy.” In the class the first question asked was, “What makes you happy?” There were different answers: Money, power, fame, success, family, love and so on. This is when I hit upon writing about, “Seeking Happiness.”

On hearing the responses contributed by the students I asked myself, can we seek happiness through love and Intimacy alone? “Is money the source of happiness? In a moment I refuted the ideas. People say money makes mere go, money can buy anything. But, I think, in fact, money can buy none of the precious things such as good health, virtues, honor, peace of mind, good wife, good children, respect, education, and knowledge, actually anything that is truthfully valuable.

We can see some people rolling in money having enormous luxurious things and material comforts but get no sleep in the night because they are not happy while there are others who get bear two meals a day yet they are very happy and contented. Similarly, we will see, no power, fame, success, or love alone can make people happy. If one of the things is missing in our life our happiness can go astray. Even the whole bundle of these things can fail to offer genuine happiness unless we perceive happiness in them. In my opinion happiness is a fantastic notion.

If you sit back and reflect carefully as to what a man is doing in his daily life, you will find that he

is doing nothing else but he is in search of happiness. All throughout his life he wanders in pursuit of happiness. Wherever he thinks happiness, he tries to be there at all costs. From the time of birth, he starts seeking happiness. First he finds happiness in the bosom of his mother. No other thing makes him as happy as that. On growing, he finds pleasure in playing with toys, then eating delicious foods, friends, music, movies, and sex. Like that his idea of happiness and source of happiness switches from one thing to another, one place to other. Day in and day out he keeps on trying to attain charm in his life but nowhere can he find the real and lasting happiness.

The trouble is we try to find happiness through our five senses: The sense of vision, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching (sex). When you get pleasure through any of these senses, increasingly your sense becomes tired; you get no more pleasure because it is a temporary and superfluous happiness. None of our five senses is capable of giving us real and lasting happiness. We keep on trying all our senses all day, get exhausted and finally sleep. The sleep takes away all our fatigue and we are fresh again in the morning, ready to hunt the happiness again. What happens exactly in the sleep? I am not sure, but it works like magic and miracle. In one of my psychology classes I learned that in sleep some hormones are secreted that rejuvenate the body.

I believe happiness is not a thing to be found but perceived. It is not tangible; it is abstract. It lies in your mind and brain. It doesn’t always depend on external circumstances. People spend all their life seeking happiness and where does it come from but there is no one method or formulae to gain it. People have already written volumes and volumes on seeking happiness and ended up finding no happiness. Seeking happiness is an art. There are no mechanical means to acquire it or buy it with money. We need a special sense to enjoy the happiness.
Finally we come to these conclusions: Real and lasting happiness doesn’t lie in external material

things. Actually happiness can be found in every bit of creation. Happiness is an divine feeling or the state of your mind. Real happiness cannot be found through five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling by touching. We need a sixth sense to experience the real and lasting happiness. Everyone has it but it is dormant; needs to be developed to perceive the real happiness. What and where is the sixth sense? How to open it and develop it? These are some points out of the book and to be elaborated elsewhere.