Monday, August 23, 2010

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS!


Happiness - a word that means different things to different people. It may be scoring good marks in exam, hitching a business deal, getting the girl/boy of your dreams, seeing someone happy, achieving high stature in society, getting rich, and much more. To some, happiness may simply be ability to make both ends meet. To others, it may be to become the ruler of the world. All of us relate happiness with some aim in life. Howsoever small or magnanimous the aim may be, we always think that we will be happy once we achieve it. After that our life will be full of content and peace.
But, once we achieve it, we again make a new and greater aim for ourselves and start working towards it thinking that THIS may finally make us happy. A student wants to get more marks in exam. He’d wish to top the class, then the school, then the area, then the state and so on. Similarly, a businessman would want to increase his profits, expand his business, start new venture, etc. The society describes this as the result of human greed. But think again. Is it really greed?
Imagine if everyone was satisfied with their first aim. Newton would have given only one rule of motion. Mathematics would have been limited to Pythagoras theorem. There would have been only one company in every field of economy. You would still be living in the ancient stone age. The blog that you are reading right now would not have existed. Most importantly, wouldn’t life have been dull?
Imagine, If you got satisfied after passing XII class and settled for a clerk’s job. How do you think your life would be? The progress that we witness today is all a result of making new aims one after the other. I am not writing all this to support human greed. But, calling human’s hunger as greed may not be appropriate. I am a student at an IIT. The thing that people run after in student life is marks and the same is true at my institute too. I have a decent score as of now for which i would have happily settled for 2 years ago. But now i wish to get more. Wondering why?
Because, as soon as i achieved my aim, a certain hollow feeling started creeping inside me. Life became dull and boring. Now, i want to achieve more marks because the joy that you get on achievement of your aim beats all the other joys of the world. The moment to feel proud of one’s own work feels different altogether. That one moment of success is the moment of happiness. Once it is over, life would again become dull no matter whoever you may be. Hence, i wish to achieve more marks and relive that moment once again. Now, if you wish to term this as my greed, you freely can. But atleast, i am not inhibiting my ambitions. 10-20 years down the road, i would not have any regret that i may have achieved a certain thing but i just let it go out of my hand. Because i have realized that life without an aim is boring, dull, tasteless and monotonous.
Even the philosophers said “An aimless life is a miserable life.” So, why limit our aims to one, two or three? We all wish to be happy in our life for as long as we can and there is no wrong in thinking this way. Isn’t it? If we had no aims, what would we do living monotonously for years? Even fresh water turns stagnant if it stays still. Life is not about the moments you take breath; it is about the moments that take your breath away! So, try to make your life full of such moments. As long as you are not doing wrong to someone, there is not even a bit of greed in aspiring to achieve more and more.
That’s how you we progressed to this day. That’s how we were able to use the internet, watch tv for entertainment, connect to our loved ones in seconds, invent new things. It was all because there was someone who was not satisfied on his achievements. He aimed for more and achieved it. So, make new aims everyday and work to achieve them. As soon as you achieve them, make new ones. Maximize the joy of achievements in your life. It feels great to receive a kiss from the girl you love, to strike a deal you have been working on for months, to see you name at the top of the list, to see yourself satisfying your own dreams. Time, nature, progress – all keep moving ahead. Nothing ever stops. Why shall we? Aspire, aim, achieve and aspire again! This time for more! LIFE...means MORE!
HAPPINESS LIES IN THE PURSUIT OF ITSELF!
P.S: Even Shah Rukh Khan says in an ad,"Don't be santusht..thoda aur wish karo!" (^_^)