So, are you happy? If you are, read this so that you remember it when you aren’t. Or when you think you aren’t. It’s normal enough to get confused when we talk about the bigger things like happiness.

Also, let’s establish it that this is a conversation. I don’t like telling things because I don’t know them half the time myself. I like to think instead. And what I think is that happiness is…not exactly momentary, but more dynamic.

It’s not momentary in the sense that it is there one moment and not the other, depending on external factors. It’s not completely independent either, though. But happiness seems different from something so surface level. Different from mere pleasure. It should be something stable, deep and inherent. Something that is a little bit beyond our petty material gains and losses. 

What I mean when I say by Happiness is dynamic is that it is like the water a very thirsty glass of water. There might’ve been a better metaphor, but this is the one I like. Like a very thirsty glass of water, we drink the water, or happiness inside of ourselves. And as long as we continue to refill it, we’re happy. It’s a continuous flow of simultaneously consuming and creating. It is not something—it’s not even a thing—possess. Or something you can see or touch, even though it does manifest in different forms. 

‘Happy!’ isn’t something you have. It’s something you do. 

So if you are happy, good for you! Read this in case you ever forget how to refill the empty glass. 

And if you aren’t happy… Why aren’t you?

Why aren’t you happy?

—Lord Byron

If you aren’t happy, you know that.
Deep down everyone knows if they’re happy or not. Some people just chose to live in denial—voluntary ignorance. Some people know that they’re not happy and refuse to acknowledge it, and honestly, I understand that. Acknowledgement brings a next level of misery—because then you know that you know but you can’t do anything to change it (can’t or won’t: a question for later.) Acknowledgement looks a lot like defeat, because, why not just give up if you can’t even pretend to go forward. Some of us prefer to pretend.  

The Two Kinds

There are many kinds of people in this world, and as much as I don’t like the classic ‘there are two types of people—x and not x’, I think it’s sometimes very convenient to use. So let’s say that there are two kinds of people in this world who are not happy. 

Those who are not happy because they can’t be.

The first ones are the ones who are, I think, not unhappy by choice. They are because they have got a reason. When you lose a soft toy, as a child, you cry. You cry and after a while you get over it. But until then, you can’t expect to be happy about it. That’s the way of life.

For a long time, I’d thought about Abraham Maslow’s chart in which he describes a hierarchy of needs. We read about it in psychology and it’s quite relevant. There are five stages of needs—physiological or basic needs, Security needs, Belongingness, Self esteem, and finally, Self actualisation. 

Only after a person has achieved the most basic needs than they focus on the next. You can’t expect someone who has not enough to eat, or nowhere to stay to worry about 

But the question I never really thought about until now is ‘Where does happiness fit into all of this?’ Happiness is not a part of this pyramid. Is it independent then? 

I mean, it’s not that those who have less than someone who has everything are not happy, or can’t be happy. It’s not that one becomes happy or reaches happiness only after one has crossed all these five stages. It’s not like happiness is somehow another level to be crossed. 

And yet, our circumstances—what we have and what we lose—directly or indirectly influence our happiness. Atleast, they do mine. There are terrible things that happen to people in this world. People lose and sometimes keep losing, until there’s nothing more to lose anymore. We all read the newspapers. Sometimes this loss roots itself inside your head and makes it home there. 

Can you tell someone to keep smiling despite that? Can you tell someone to stay happy knowing that? Isn’t that cruel? 

Sometimes life isn’t fair at all and those who keep on going about the ‘beauty of life’  and ‘looking at the bright side’ sound either too cruel or too naive. Like they never grew out of their perfect childhood. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t grown out of it either. But you did, and phrases like ‘happiness comes from within’ seem like cruel jokes. 

But in the end, what can you do?

You can be miserable for months and weeks and years and have reason for it, but in the end what can you do except atleast looking for happiness.

We’ve all lost something. Small things. Big things. Things you can’t live without . And things here doesn’t mean just the inanimate ones. What I mean is, everyone loses and everyone hates that loss—the emptiness it leaves behind. But how long can you hate it before you want to fill it up again. 

And in the end, what can you do but offer loss a corner on the sofa, put on an old movie, and wish to sleep the sorrow away.

Those who can be happy but are not. 

I think that the second kind are the really miserable ones, the ones you sometimes hate and mostly pity. Because they can but they won’t, or maybe don’t know how to. They’re staring at happiness in the face but won’t meet her eyes. The one’s who can get everything but refuse to ask for it. The ones who have everything but realise it too late. 

I also think that after a particular amount of time, every unhappy person becomes the second kind.

The problem is that you think of happiness strictly as an object that may be achieved through some means. You think that if only you gain this or that, then you will be happy. This or that, here can refer to plenty of thing—success, money, fame, something other than this, someone else, some new place, a bigger house, another phone, anything. 

But the thing is, success only makes you successful. Money makes you rich. And the thing you have when you buy a bigger house is just that—a bigger house. 

I’m not saying that these these are not worthy of important as they are. You’re completely justified in wanting to be successful or rich or make a new start. 

But you’re not justified in wanting to be successful because you want to be happy. The two are not causally connected to each other. And not every time it happens that someone becomes happy because they become rich. 

Don’t confuse the two. Don’t make them out to be the same thing. Don’t live under the illusion that when you reach a particular level of achievement, you’ll finally grasp happiness. No! You’ll grasp that particular form of achievement—money, success…whatever it is. Any happiness that follows will be entirely of your own making. 

Let’s consider two cases

Let’s consider two cases—A and B.
Both A and B have the same amount of material possessions, the same healthy familial relationships—the same external factors, in a sense. And yet A is sad, while B is perfectly happy. 

Do you think happiness is independent of external factors then?

It must be, shouldn’t it. I mean, if they’ve got the same amount of blessings and yet one is happy and one is not, then it must come from within. But…

But suppose you take all of it away from both of them. Will B still be happy? I don’t think so. I won’t be, if I were B.

This means that happiness isn’t as independent as that. It’s more complex. Bigger. 

Remember how I said that I think it’s dynamic. I think it’s also a balance of both internal and external factors. It’s more about satisfaction. It’s about what you’ve got and how much joy you can synthesis out of it. 

Happiness in Fool’s Paradise

Consider a person who has everything. A large, luxurious palace, a loving spouse, an obedient child, trustworthy friends. Everything, in a sense, that could make the person happy. And this person is happy. Because what reason is there not be? What cause is there to be unhappy?

But this happiness is only illusory. The spouse is cheating on them, the child lies behind their back, the friends criticise them as soon as they are out of sight.

Now ask yourself if you would call this person Happy? Would you take their place in their castle of illusions and deception.
And would you ever know of you were that person.

Do you really ever know of you actually are happy?

If we claim that Happiness is dependent only on ourselves and on what we believe; that it is wholly independent of any material objects, desires or attachments, then we have to admit that this person in the Fool’s Paradise is perfectly happy. We have to admit to the illusion being a satisfactory end to every means.

But it is not. It cannot be.

Happiness is also being aware of that happiness. No one is actually happy without being aware of it. Otherwise it’s not happiness, just something to be envied and pitied by others.