PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
(Contributed by Shyamashree Sen

George Bernard Shaw once said, " A lifetime of happiness! No man can bear it. It would be hell on earth."

Perhaps in keeping with that today’s man’s life is fraught with tensions and worries. He is chasing the elusive "Happiness" at all times.

Needless to say that the modern age is one of "instants"…when everything is like the instant coffee we drink. What has happened is that we have become too obsessed with our own lives. We live in apartments. We put our kids in Westernized schools.

We try to shirk our duties by our parents on the pretext of ‘transfers’ and foreign postings (though that is not necessarily the actual reasons for staying separate).

We feel very depressed if we don’t qualify as members of famous social clubs and get a couple of foreign trips (conferences) perks in our jobs. Our families have grown smaller and smaller and what we have are a father, a mother and a kid or two.

In most cases both parents are working and the kids are either sent to prestigious boarding schools or made to suffer hours and hours of tuitions and extra classes to keep up with the Joneses. We seem to be in a constant strife. Better and better and better. That’s what we want life to be.

And, the more we strive, the more elusive this "better life" seems to be.

We are unhappy. We take a couple of sleeping pills before going to bed.

Work seems to mount all the time. The table is always piled high with paper work.

At home we hear that there were problems at school or the household staff have become very demanding or consumer goods are disappearing from the markets or are becoming too pricey. The spouse is cribbing for no reason… So where is "happiness"?

But what we are missing out on are…

• Love and respect for each other- be it at home or play or work "Love begins at home, if we can only make our homes temples of love" as Mother Teresa had said.

• Giving time for each member of the family.
• A sense of responsibility towards one another- that we need to comfort one another in times of stress. "You will find that there are always too many people who reach for the stool when there is a piano to be removed."
• Fellow feeling- that all of us have empathy for one another
• Self respect –"Self respect is the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious".- knowing about our own selves and respecting others as well
• Knowing what we are worth – this gives us confidence
• An inner calm – this has to be cultivated – not to get excited by what others say or do
• A sense of values – knowing what one’s priorities are
• A clear idea about what we want out of life- so that we may ignore those things which are irrelevant
• Commitments- to be committed about the promises made
• Being a human being – having the qualities like love, caring, fellow feeling

We have to first set our houses in order and then we neither have to visit a shrink, nor find "gurus" to teach us the right path. The right path is very close to us…it is within us…but we do not realize it.

If we are honest and true to ourselves and tolerate differences and can keep our priorities right, we will certainly be happy in this life. Rotary has taught us this tolerance in many ways. We come in to Rotary by being invited to join a club and meet people from diverse cultures. They are different from us. We work on different projects side by side and begin to appreciate our differences. It is only when we come to terms with this one underlining fact that not all of us are similar, appreciate these basic differences, and, can co-exist without a complaint, that we may say that we have achieved "happiness".

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