Where is Happiness

Several years ago I was addressing a gathering of happy people in Iceland. Going by the country-wise global happiness index, Iceland is a constant among the top five happiest nations on planet pretty much since this index was conceptualized. Though the position of happy nations in the list changes from one year to another, you will always find Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden among the top ten and Iceland more than any nation has been featured in the top or second position. So I had gathered that the gathering comprised of happy people who had cracked the happiness code.

 I continued with my usual nonchalant twopence worth talk full of laughter and utter nonsense yet the crowd roared and appreciated and paid me handsomely. During the Q&A a dainty girl (Icelandic women are generally pretty) with daunting dentures stood up and asked: Where is happiness? Where do we find it?

 I was silenced for a minute being asked this question from a race that must have already found it, though apparently not. So I stayed silent and looked around, up at the roof, towards the dark corners of the stage, overlooking the audience, emptied my trouser pockets, fingered my jacket pocket as well as I pantomimed that I was looking for something. It was pure melodrama since I already knew the answer. Being very courteous and polite unlike their Viking ancestors, the audience remained silent ogling my ridiculous overtures. Finally I looked up and stared back right into the eyes of the girl and said: Happiness is wherever you find it. As the audience broke into an applause, more out of relief than appreciation of something so profound, I glanced up and thanked my master silently. The mountain guru who had told me once to my question where is wisdom: wherever you find it.

 This brings me to the central point of this post. Indeed, where is happiness? Wherever you find it. So, my point is where do you find it! And how will you know when you find it that you have found it! Is it found in only one place and only at one time, or must we keep looking at different times at different places.

 If you ask a new mother, she would say in the smile of her suckling baby. And when this same lady becomes a grandmother then perhaps in the smile of her grandkids. A lover might find happiness in the eyes of her beloved. A newly married bride would find it in her husband’s arms yet several years down the lane when they are fighting a bitter battle of divorce and custody of their child then perhaps she would find happiness in the thought that she would never have to be in those arms again. A painter might find happiness within his canvas yet lose interest once it is done and sold. Some find happiness at birth, and some find it in death. My neighbor’s father recently passed away and despite teary eyes he said that he was happy since his father had been completely paralyzed and comatose for over a year. Many of my friends find happiness in new possessions be it a car, watch, shoes or anything materialistic yet sometimes later when the novelty wears off they look elsewhere for that elusive happiness.

 Why is happiness transitory and elusive and fragile and so temporal? Objective happiness is nearly impossible to define or feel. Some of us do, perhaps once in a lifetime. And we will come to that later but first let’s deal with the common happiness.

 The feeling or emotion of happiness as we commonly understand is not really objective it is highly relative and subjective since almost always it isn’t pure but adulterated with something else. We are not happy simply without any reason or causation. We are happy because… and you can fill up the gap. You could be happy because you got a new job, got married to your sweetheart, bought a new house, went on a holiday, drank your favorite coffee, became a parent, or an ailing family member finally died. This kind of happiness is elusive and fragile since it is based upon something. And anything that lies outside of you is not yours even if the illusion of possession is there.

So anything that is not yours is bound to alter, change and perish over which you have absolutely no control though we might think that we do. For instance the child, which at birth was your biggest happiness, as it grows and changes against your wishes and aspirations now starts becoming your biggest source of misery and pain. Actually even what is within you, which is your physical body, your thoughts, your deeds, your actions, your materialistic possessions, they too are not really under your control. If they were then I guess none of us would want to grow old and feeble. If we had control over our thoughts and ideas then I guess none of us would ever be sad or miserable. No one would commit suicide and no one will speak in anger or hurt anyone else.

 So if we continue to pursue relative happiness through cause and effect ratio then we will never really be happy. We would be delighted, excited, elated, even enchanted, but happy… perhaps never. And of course you will find this happiness wherever you find it but it will only be subjective and momentary. Hence you will keep on looking and keep on finding. Which isn’t a bad thing. Like I keep climbing mountains, from one summit to another, which is my relative happiness or my travels around the world. And upon every mountain or through every country (even when I have already been there before) I always find something new, fresh to experience, new people to meet and vistas to witness and this sense of novelty, always doing something that I have never done before is my source of happiness and therefore I find it wherever I find it, which is pretty much anywhere and everywhere.

 During these lockdown corona times I find it inside a house at sea level within my writings and books because I am constantly writing something that I had never written before and I am reading new books, pursuing new things. I am trying to do all that my super traveling life had deprived me so far since being in constant physical motion life did deny me lots of things that can only be gained by being stationary. I do not complain because that super physically motion-filled life is my conscious choice to be. I love that lifestyle, of living out of backpacks without any roots or bindings, completely free, footloose and vagabond like the clouds. Yet with the stationary life that now I have been living since the last four months, I learnt the benefits of being at one place, even if it isn’t in the mountains. I am sure the lockdown and lack of human social interaction has had minimal affect on me, unlike most of you, since my entire life is a self-quarantine as I am not a social person, preferring my own company or that of the outdoors. But what I am trying to highlight is that yes even in these times I have found happiness wherever I looked. And my guru’s wisdom stands true. Happiness is everywhere, within everything. We just have to find it, doesn’t matter where you look or into what.

 Objective happiness or pure happiness that is beyond any causation is more esoteric and difficult perhaps to perceive. How can one be happy without a cause? I think of it like the air within which we all are immersed from the day we are born till the day we die. It is there always. How often do we really think about it consciously? We breathe in and out every moment. In an average lifespan of 70 years it is scientifically believed we take around 511,000,000 breaths. That is 511 million breaths. Unless you are a mountaineer like me, you barely think of this phenomenon or what causes it. We only begin to realize the existence and importance of something when we are about to lose it. So with life and air. And so is with pure objective happiness. It is around us, always, forever. Yet we do not see it, realize it nor perceive it.

 Can we be happy just for the sake of being happy? Ask this question to yourself. There is no answer to this besides what you come up with. I cannot answer this for you, nor can anyone else. We each need to think of it. But I am hopeful that nearly all of us at least once in our lifetime have experienced this kind of happiness. When we are literally floating up in the air and in seventh heaven yet we have no idea what caused it. It happens to me all the time because I live with consciousness of this happiness, this air that we breathe and that sustains us. It’s not difficult to learn this objective happiness. You can begin to understand it with little practice.

 Next time whenever you feel supremely happy and content with life, just sit down, instead of popping that champagne bottle, and write down all the reasons in the order of priority for that happiness at that moment. Once you have the list in your hand start striking them one by one, start from the bottom. Notice if your amount of happiness begins to reduce as you strike off one reason after another. If it does then ask yourself why can’t you be happy with the rest of the reasons? And if by striking off all the reasons you still feel same happiness as before then that is your objective happiness that doesn’t need a reason. After you have done this exercise adequate number of times would you begin to realize that happiness is in every moment, in every nook and corner and wide open space, in everything and also in nothing. And yes you would find it even inside your pockets. Else you could go around the world, possess all the wealth in the world or the love and admiration of every man and woman yet you won’t be truly happy.

 I will conclude this post with another story. I met this beautiful German Diva at a conference in Hamburg. She is a well known singer hence I won’t mention her name here. She was performing at the event while I was one of the keynote speakers. I am naturally drawn to beautiful women so it wasn’t a surprise that at the end of the event we were together at the bar. I nursed a glass of wine while she sipped martini. Her songs were melancholy. At close quarters her beauty was like a diamond with fissures within. I asked her, why did she compose and write only melancholy music. She said, sadness is her creative energy, she writes and composes when she is sad, which, to her credit she is often. So I asked, being me, what did she do when she was happy. She tossed the drink into her throat and looking into my eyes smiled for the first time that evening.

When I am happy, I am just happy. I do nothing.