Had your breakfast? Rushed for work/school? Had a good lunch? Back home for dinner? Too tired to do anything else, or maybe spent some ‘quality’ time on the computer? Or maybe play a game or two? So all set for a nice shut eye?

Sounds familiar? I am sure it does. We are all ‘guilty’ of it. Guilty? Why Guilty you might ask – why not I will ask you back. How old are we? What did we do with our life? We are always tossed around by this huge wheel called life. Why are we slaves of the environment? Why do we caging ourselves to the routine boundaries of the world of our making? No one has enslaved us – we have! We are always looking for people to blame this on… Look no further, there is none. It is we. We are the ones we make ourselves who we are. Let us not go into the blame game.

Take a step back. Is there something we can do differently today – maybe start with the small things. Maybe you could take a moment to smell the roses, say ‘Hi!’ to your neighbour, or your bus driver, or maybe read a book, write a poem, share a coffee with your loved ones, spent time to reflect on yourself, and the list goes on. These are not difficult tasks, but we find it so hard to just do that little more.

I once was queuing up for lunch. I was extremely hungry and the person preparing the food was very slow. As I try to have my own conversations to keep myself sane from the infuriating flame of anger and agitation, I saw an old lady behind me. I was asking myself if I should let her go ahead of me, then again I carried on my internal conversation: ‘I am sure she had all the time in the world, but I am the busy one’… ‘But then she is old and she will feel pain standing’… ‘well my food is going to be very simple to prepare, it will be very short… should I even bother thinking about giving her the space to move forward?’… The internal conversations I have are simple in nature but complex in depth. When my turn came, I moved aside and let her move forward. She got her food, and she did not thank me… but that did not bother me. I was totally elated to know that I did a good thing. 

It is not the size of deeds we do everyday. It is the thought and the will to make a difference to others and in the process for ourselves. We have to always learn to take a step back and look around us. To take a deep breath and to appreciate the fact that we are living. We need to accept the fact that we are grateful for the many thing – even to have this nice keyboard and monitor to do the work, sitting on a nice cosy chair. Take a break, take a breather, enjoy life!

We have everything, but we have nothing.

What is the happiness that we seek?
A poor chap lives on a fraction of what we spend on our gadget or accessories, but who is happier? Poor comparison it may be, but the question still stays. How do we measure happiness? Is it a case of who has more, or a case of who feels more satisfied. Then again does satisfaction lead to happiness? So… what is happiness and who and how is it defined? Could we say happiness is the end result we seek — may it be chasing our dreams, or having the heightened sense of achievement? We are always pursuing happiness aren’t we. Is happiness just an ultimate goal we want to achieve, and is it not a enjoyable journey to accompany us?

Let us now look at it from another perspective – Peace. Does it gives us peace?
How different is it from ‘Salvation’ or ‘Enlightenment’ or Solitude – the purpose here being the absence of both happiness and sadness bring us to a state of pure bliss… pure peace. That is an amazing space to be in… but a difficult painful path to pursue… but the path does not has space for ‘worldly feelings’ – or does it? Even the basic happiness is within our grasp, we find it so difficult to retain, so then how are we to move beyond that to forgo happiness for a greater feeling – the sense of complete nothingness?

The ‘state of nothingness’ is so amazing, it is like experiencing a great dream you would not want to wake up from. And once you so do wake up, you will always want to go back to it, only now you do not know how. But let’s take one step at a time… let’s be happy first :)