After the tiresome journey through a desert, we have finally found a lamp. Now we rub this lamp of Aladdin and the genie must come out. Will the genie emerge from this lamp and fulfill all our wishes, all that we’ve been waiting for? Will all of this turn to reality in the next moment?
Our childhood dreams are heavily shaped by societal, cultural, and parental norms. Children fantasize every ambition as one holy grail for life. They think, believe, hope, and wish it’s going to turn out as they’ve aspired. And the day it turns out will be the day of life. Powered by life. For life. In life. It is what will make life, LIFE for us.
A medical aspirant who once dreamed of being a specialized surgeon would yearn for life for that moment to shift from imagination to reality. It is a whole video frame that begins by telling everyone of our ambitious plans, and people on the receiving end would clap and praise. The time will shift through years of studying in every class from 1 to 10, making sure to secure good grades. After a decade of strenuosity, the hard part is yet to come. The ladder is yet to be climbed because the race has just started. From now on, you will see people falling behind by mere margins of decimals, not even digits. Complete decimals. But even if you’ve crossed this tussling border, welcome to the other side. Now you will start learning all the required skills which will finally give you your declaration of success. Once you cross that bridge, you will finally reach where you have been wanting to.
Who put happiness in a box?
Who invented a measuring unit for happiness?
Who confined happiness to a chest placed seven oceans apart, so that we have to first find a map for it, and then this Jack Sparrow needs to set out in search of this treasure?
Just across the bridge, just after a specific time, covering certain distance, doing all necessary hard work, praying through lasting nights, crushing some others, devoting all hearts and minds and bones and souls.
There it will be. There will be happiness.
There will be that one pond of water in this desert, which will give life to the empty souls.
So, that is how we have always destined happiness in our lives. That is how we have always been thinking about happiness. We have placed it after certain miles, after crossing a certain bridge. It’s almost as if the adrenaline in your body should boost by the competition, and it will be just that victory after the race that will give you happiness. If it turns out any other way, there will be no happiness. And it is so only because we have made it to be this way. Because we have designed it to be this way.
All of it implies that happiness is that one point marked on the map and we will need the sorcerer’s potion in order to reach there. It’s a prolonged period of life once dedicated to this exertion, then we will get the gift of joy. But life isn’t just that short span of joy. It was all that was existing and happening in the numerous seconds before that moment.
We have dedicated life to just that one moment when we step on the pedestal to receive our accomplishment, our award. But what about all the other moments and all the other seconds which were happening or existing before that one accomplishing moment? Do we consider them not to be life? Were they just existing?
And there was life in the competition. There was life in the race. There was life in the claps. There was life in the slaps. There was life in the stepping of feet. There was life in the sweating of the head. There was life in the sadness. There was life in every madness. There was life in every gladness. There was life in every laughter. There was life in the cries. There was life in every darkness. There was life in every light. There was life in every smile. There was life in every sadness. There was life in every sight. There was life in every view. There was life in every joy. There was life in every bleakness. There was life in every hue. There was life in every eye. There was life in every heart. There was life in every soul. There was life in every silence. There was life in every noise. There was life in every moment.
There was life in each and every simple moment and second which was just very simple in its nature. It didn’t have any accomplishment or anything to be garnished with, but it was just simple and it had life, and that’s all it had. But we have always associated happiness with the big moments, those which gave us something of our fondness, and in doing so, we almost consider more than half of our life to be less than happiness. We consider out of this 100%, only 10% or perhaps 5% to be of life and happiness, the part which gave us our dreams or goals or achievements. But the 90% of it, which was just simple and lovely, isn’t up to the mark. It’s just not full of life for us because of its ordinary nature.
And this is the problem with this destination approach. Life before the desired moment does not matter much, as if it simply does not exist. The thing is, it exists, and happens with equal joy and zeal as any other moment. We just couldn’t live it to the fullest because we were fully invested in some coming moment. We impatiently waited for that upcoming moment, forgetting that the one passing by is equally a moment. It is one of the easiest methods to cut short your life because you forgot to live half of your life and never realized this fact.
This approach can be seen in many people around us. It often resides inside the cloak of passion. And we mistake this imposture as vehement zeal. I think this is a thing that comes as a byproduct of passion. It is more of a burden in life, and that’s why if you see some of the most passionate people around, you can see a hint of this destinational approach in them. All those students who spend each and every moment of their life in late nights and teenage years expecting that their life will begin in their early adulthood or when they start to realize their dreams. That is when life will be, that is when this passion will convert into happiness, and that is where happiness is. Perhaps because childhood is that time when you could run toward any destiny as told to you and the maturity could best be exploited. Another aspect of it could be the massive influence of other people’s lives on you. When you see everyone in a glam and chic pose on some stage, you become subjected to it. It makes us believe that life is as it appears on the other side of the screen. It is all the glam, the chicness, the sleekness, the style, the fashion. Perhaps life is what is on the other side, and just from that point the search for happiness begins.
In that one moment. One click. One pose.
When time and moment get subjected to destinational scrutiny, one year becomes an ultimate measure of its worth. And so, years also get labeled as ‘happy, happier, happiest‘, based on how close you got to your destiny. Or in simpler words, how many goals did you fulfill this year? How good did this year turn out to be for you? How many goals could you cross off your list?
The goal life. A goal-oriented life. For some people, the goal of their life is to live a goal-oriented life. I think we all are aware of the goal lists we make at the beginning of each year. The glamorous new year goals, which one way or another are what we want out of this life. And we’ve all been at that point where we just sat down and noted the few things which would give us meaning to this year, which would accomplish our goals and give us joy. The resolutions. It’s as if we are trading our joy for something, and in this bargain, we have set our goals.
When we define meaning by a certain definition, if that definition is not fulfilled, the whole meaning splashes into gushes of sadness. What happens if the things with which we add meaning do not come out true? Does the whole thing become meaningless? If things don’t have meaning, do they become worthless? If the goals set ahead of time are not fulfilled, does the time become valueless?
Associating happiness with a certain action makes it dependent on that action, and associating years with such accomplishments really makes them fragile. A catharsis is always good in life, but if we count all happy moments as those where we achieved something, some of us find that list not too long. We forget the various silent in-between moments which gave us a lot, but they went silently unnoticed as some bridge between two happy moments.
Not every single person gets lucky enough to spend the whole year traveling to 12 different locations in the world. Not every person found this year to be a kickstart of their dream. Not every person found a new friend this year. Not everybody gets their resolutions fulfilled. Not every person was able to spend this year in good health or without sickness. Not every person gets to live a year happily and safely with their family.
The keyword is ‘happily’.
If a person spends his whole year sick, should he not be happy with it? Those who could not get their wishes this year found it to be a waste of life. Those who spent this year in loneliness should categorize it as a bad moment. Those to whom life could not happen as they had wished and who spent the year following the same routine, did it turn out to be a boring year for them? Was it not eventful? Was it not a good time? Does it lose all of its value? Is it not a good year then? Or is it good enough, or is it not good enough to be categorized in the happiest column, so it would fall low on the scale? So if it was not as we had expected it to be, then was it a miss? Was it not a good year? Would you not go through this same time if you were given a chance to live this year again?
Years, days, hours, minutes. These are not just units. These are moments. This is TIME. And time is life. We have adopted this fashion for productivity to design every second to its full potential. But in this race, what we have lost is the importance of time. Its real value, an acknowledgment of its presence, just for its simple existence. We need this so we can live through its absence. We sometimes spend it productively but we forget to live it vivaciously. Then we forget the difference between being productive and being alive when we sit down with our list of goals to finally mark it as a good or bad year. We forget that it was a part of time. Time in itself is just the most precious thing, and no matter how much you get to live, at the end, all a person is asking for on his deathbed is a little bit more time.
We did not get the year as we designed, but if we are here again after 365 days, it must have added something to our growth, to our life. It gave us a chance to live 365 more days of life and add some more seconds to the total seconds we’d lived on this planet. It gave us a chance just to be anything,
Anything. Everything. Nothing.
Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere.
It is that chain link which connects us from the previous moment to the next, from the previous year to the next year. And so, as we sit to finally assess this year, we should be a little kinder to ourselves. If we are here to finally tag it as Happy, Happier, or Happiest, I think we should be just a little bit more kind to ourselves. And obviously, yes, we can set this happiness index. We can choose which name and index we would like to give this year, perhaps not on the basis of achievements we achieved, but the moments we lived, the silences we experienced, the moments we cherished, the seconds we endured, the miseries we went through, and the happiness that was waiting for us. This was all a part of life. This was all a part of some joy. This was all a part of the every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month that made it a year. This was all happiness. It is not in any way a lesser thing. There is no shame in living a simple life.
And so it is in our hands whether we like to dedicate this year or name it as Happy, Happier, or Happiest one in our life. I think we should keep in mind before tagging it in any way that it is that one year which was a part of this life, which gave us a moment to move from the previous year to the next year, to live into some new moment, new 365 days, new months, new days, new hours.
So, I am not sure if you really found that Aladdin’s lamp this year, or if you found any stone which could turn all of your wishes to reality this year. Or if you are still stuck at the same spot in this desert, just keep walking. And do not think that taking every step taken, was a waste in any way. It took you one step closer to where you were going, but more than that, it gave you a moment to live life, to live through this world, to actually move and to actually BE. The very fact that we have all this in life and we got to see this much of it, to travel that much of the desert this year, I think we can categorize it among the HAPPIEST moments and in the good years, in the good book list, and it won’t hurt us in any way. We can all be happy about the fact that we are experiencing this, that we have this whole journey ahead of us, that we are in this desert and we will be able to walk some more distances, live through some more moments, breathe through some more of the year, and perhaps live one more year.
And with this wish that you would be kinder when naming this year or tagging it in any category of good or bad or ugly, and that you would be kinder to yourself while writing your new year’s resolutions, expecting them to be not as per your expectations but just an experience of life, as a Part Of Life:
HAPPY NEW YEAR.
