Friday, December 12, 2008

Why am I unhappy?

A noticeable gap between two postings makes me liable to seek apology. So I am feeling a sense of apology and hope you sense it while reading, though all such sense of mine is total nonsense. The fact is I am a bit bothered by a silly question. Questioned by me and to be answered by me only. And that is:
Why am I unhappy?
Had I asked this question to you I’d have got many practical answers. But I won’t ask. Let me see how realistic study did I do till now.
As it happens one question can not necessarily be answered by an answer, it may get a question to be answered in reply. So here are questions for the question:
When was I happy in the past?
Or
What is happiness if I were to compare it
with in future?
Now let me drill down these typical question type answers of the original problem. First I’d go in the past ( I mean look in the past ….. wish going the past might be possible ) to recapture some moments of happiness, then will wish for so called happiness in future(since going in future isn’t possible too.. yet ).
When was I happy?...... I am stuck as if I didn’t have a single moment. Still thinking….. not really. Actually I am looking not back one month, two month, a year or two but way back around 25 years when I’d have been a one and a half year old baby. You must be wondering why didn’t I go to full length i.e. from the day I got birth? Because I have no clue or even an Idea of whether I was happy or unhappy or whatever and by the experience of life I can safely say that no one will tell me that I was an unhappy child at that lapsed duration. So I do not consider those to be my happy days at all. Had those been my happy days, I would have memorized those, as people say they cherish the happy moments for life, I would have also done so. The first day I was happy, if I recall, was when I was bathing in a bucket( yes not bath tub ) along with my cousin who was on another bucket in the careful custody of my elder brother and cousin sister. But then, my brother pulled me out of that and wrapped me in a towel forcefully, I started crying and got unhappy. Then I waited for few years to grow to become independent and went to a pond to bath. Irony, there I sank and my brother pulled me out. No doubt I was crying and unhappy. Now, however, I can swim but that does not make me happy even though I do not fear of sinking anymore.
At the time when 25 paisa were enough to get 5 toffees, I got a chance to have a regular source of collecting paisa. One of my friend told me that people drop money at temples so that little kids can have toffees while at school. I got happy and looted the temple. I got a rupee and 25 paisa by collecting coins of 5/10/25 paisa. Won’t use ‘Irony’ word but got caught red handed on the first day at job. Got punished by slapping with ‘Bichchoo’ grass on body. Uooooh…. How could I be happy? Then started the burden of studies and ‘behave yourself’ kind of time. I don’t think anybody would have enjoyed those study related topics at home or at school. But can’t ignore those light moments in between during schooling. Actually I don’t want to give those days weight, since I get a little bit biased about those days by thinking those were the golden days. But I know by and large I wasn’t happy at all. I passed metric with good numbers but on the first day in senior secondary class my classmate torn down my umbrella (new). Happiness got aloof.
First day at job was good. After one week, every week came to make me weak and finally weep at times. Here I strongly feel you yourself avoid saying I would have been happy.
Many similar moments came and went past, but none without ifs and buts.
At this particular moment too, while I thought I’d feel happy writing this stuff, these #*^&$% mosquitoes making me clap behind them regularly.
Now if I try to look in future, blindly assuming that I did not have a single bite of happiness, I see a colorful picture of happiness. Wait.. Wait.. Wait.
This dirty bi**h happiness had cheated me like a pond of water in dull deserts, many times in the past. This colorful picture is actually a colorless, monotonous and unhappy present………….
Nope… you gotta wait…..
Here comes Universal Truth of Happiness in next posting………..

5 comments:

v08i said...

Maybe you became unhappy at times like those, but now whenever you'd be remembering those short spans of unhappiness,I am sure you'd feel like laughing at those moments.(And feel somewhat nostalgic too.)

Jyotsna said...

Surely await for the universal truth of happiness.

This post reminded me of a message I once received -

Memories often play a very confusing role. They make us laugh for the moments we cried and make us cry for the moments we laughed at.

Mohan Joshi said...

Thank you Pals!!

Anonymous said...

My first comment to any post till date---

I am a lost individual while pondering over past & probably inner self gets filled with different permutation combinations of 10 known emotions (information source: mojo), being poor at numbers can’t even calculate this number exactly.

Incidentally few days back, i asked Vijay to develop an application that gives people an interface to-

96chances (name I thought), what if people are given two chances a week to change something that might have happened to him in past (obviously one would try changing sad times). Guess then worst times could be sampled to map a happier fantasy (future) & thus a happiest moment of achieving the ideal (irrespective of it being in wonderland).

Else happiness is too abstract to figure out it becomes a routine job for us to remain speculative on two extremes. Happiness in present is somehow governed by emotions of past & future worries and hence unachieved so far “at least for me”

Mohan Joshi said...

Thank you Ravindra for sharing thoughts.