Growing up, I wasn’t always happy. I didn’t fit in my school – I wasn’t one of those kids who could be labeled and put into a neat box. I wasn’t one of those kids who went to school, who came back, played a little and went off to sleep. I was a kid who thought. I was a kid who preferred sitting on my terrace and learning life from the sea than from classroom. I was a kid who asked, “What is love, what is life, what is death?” even before I could spell any of these words. Growing up was happiness for me when I was allowed to just be. And traumatic when I was forced to go to school – or do anything which I was supposed to do.
I kept searching for a permanent state of happiness. I yearned for it. Ironically, I even cried for it. I used to wonder where can I find this thing called happiness. As I grew older, life became a journey of relationships and professional success and failures: the emotional highs and the lows that came with it. My happiness depended on the people around me. It depended on what I achieved, or didn’t. Today he did what I wanted – so I am happy. Tomorrow, I wouldn’t be. Today things went my way so I was happy – yesterday I wasn’t. Between these crazy emotions, and crazier life, I tethered along – for what else was there to do?
It was only after I met my guru did I even realize that happiness wasn’t something to be found on the outside, it was something that emanated from within. I discovered that Happiness was me. It was the first time I realized that I was in charge of my happiness and no one could induce it in me or take it away from me – without my consent.
I struggled to find joy within me. So used to so many intense emotions – sometimes positive, sometimes not, I wasn’t able to immediately see that simple, quiet stream of bliss within me. However, meditation after meditation, hearing my guru session after sessions – something began to happen.
The darkness within, the cobwebs began to clear out… a light I didn’t even know existed within, began to shine forth. Dimly in the beginning and with passing time it became a blaze. I now realize happiness is the simplest, most natural, most available human emotion. It is who we are. The lesser and lesser we condition ourselves that it is impossible to reach this state – the more and more, we just allow our inner Silence to speak, the more we will realize this is us.
It’s not easy. We are surrounded by a world of thoughts, information, of noise, of judgments – and in all this chaos to sit, be, and actually become who we are has started seeming a little difficult. But it is not so. In fact, one of the swiftest ways to find bliss is to be in nature. Nature doesn’t think. Nature doesn’t inform. It isn’t noisy. It doesn’t judge. It just is. And surrounded by it, we too just become.
Somehow as a civilization – from being completely in touch with ourselves, and having little information about the world around we become a generation who became completely aware of the world around and lost touch with ourselves. The aim, I feel, is to find a balance. Be connected to the world with technology, attractions and distractions while firmly being rooted in our sense of selves.
Before I conclude, just closed my eyes, smiled to myself and allowed the joy within to make its presence felt. Knowing the within is smiling, I smile with you, dear reader, and hope you too feel one with this sentence that is now my Truth:
There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.
Happiness is not outside of me. Happiness is me.