Monday, September 2, 2019

THE BAROMETER OF HAPPINESS


THE BAROMETER OF HAPPINESS

It has to be set within ourselves – it cannot record happiness based on the conditions outside. Setting our happiness based on an objective like ‘World Peace’ works only as beauty pageant rhetoric. That is why so many of us flounder in misery. Our happiness is conditional and the condition is an impossible or improbable criteria. 

“If only my husband were more communicative”, “My children more obedient”, “My waist thinner”, “My family more supportive”, “The oceans plastic free”, “The Amazon would stop burning” – you see how this list for our happiness grows? Like a virulent bacteria it multiplies our unhappiness and like the Ebola virus it mutates into the incurable. From being unhappy with your spouse to the plastic in the ocean is just one small leap for that mutant gene of dissatisfaction…

Chuck out that external barometer that has unreasonable parameters to record contentment – a slimmer waist, a fatter bank balance, a communicative partner, plenty of non-Whatsapp friends, lustrous hair… Record nothing. Everything turns to dust (now that would be a household mantra to escape that chore) so why bother about anything but this moment?

Right here, right now, this is a good day. Just live it. And that thing called happiness? It cannot be measured – it is a variable. And, like all variables it is based on one constant – your happiness lies within you.

Now go find your bliss….

Nimmou Nilakantan  

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