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Living
will not give up on you until you give up on
living.
It is the attitude you take to these problems
that makes all the difference. As the saying
goes, "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry
and you cry alone". Laughter is the fulfillment
of happiness. Life is to be enjoyed to its
fullest, no matter what your condition. The
secret of staying young at heart and active even
while the rest of one's body and mind is showing
its age. Undoubtedly one can grow old with
grace. To begin appreciating life, pinpoint
something you are extremely grateful for and
count them every morning --- your eyes, your
hands, your lovely children.
I have seen many people rise above the setbacks
in life and do something to help others and in
the process, help themselves. Growing old is not
just a case of sitting still and watching TV.
Several of my friends are worried about
retirement, but I keep on reminding them that
retirement isn't about departing from, but
rather leading into fresh opportunities and to
be of some help to others. I know friends and
family members old and young, who ride their
bikes, go for walks and do Yoga. Western society
commonly perceives happiness as the outcome of
what you achieve and acquire. "My whole life
would improve if I had a new car, a large house
on the lake, and then I can relax and be happy".
Happiness is a state of mind. One can have a
brand new car, a very large house, a boat etc.
but still be miserable.
"Materialism is toxic for happiness", says
University of Illinois Psychologist Ed Diener. I
know of several rich materialists friends
leading a very unhappy and miserable life as
those who are careless about getting and
spending. From my personal experience, the most
obvious component of real happiness, I found
out, is intense concentration, which is the
primary reason that activities such as painting,
writing, music, and other forms of leisure have
survived. In my opinion, the important
ingredient for concentration - whether it
happens when writing for newspapers or a book of
poetry associated with paintings is that it
involves a challenge that matches one's ability.
Let us all remember that the only solution to
achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to
keep finding new opportunities at any age, to
refine one's skills - do the job better or
faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it,
find a new set of challenges more appropriate to
your stage of life. Happiness is hard to define
but most people are aware of whether they are
happy or not. Some believe that happiness is a
form of luck and that some people are destined
to be happy while others are destined to be
unhappy.
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Comments: |
I was contemplating on a similar
topic, but was hesitant to write an
article on PatnaDaily expecting a
mute response to that. I am sure no
contributor likes to see his
articles lying like a grave without
an epitaph, let alone the lilies.
We are not capitalizing on the
experience of our senior citizens. I
do not understand why one has to
retire. Retirement should always be
voluntary. The role should change at
the age of retirement (create new
roles, that is). Do politicians,
artists, businessmen retire? I do a
job, because doing that makes me
happy. If happiness is the state of
mind, why does the search for
happiness start post-retirement?
Attitude can always help me to find
alternative means to happiness. But,
why do I have to lose it in the
first place? I request the author to
respond to my query. - Kumod Jha
- Dec. 15, 2006
You
meet people and they smile. Does a
smile indicate happiness? NO. A
laugh/smile can be temporarily
pasted on the face of the most
miserable person too.
Point is, happiness must come from
within. How can there be happiness
within which manifests itself by
brightening your face?
To be genuinely happy, first you
have to be at peace with your own
conscience. You can not be happy and
feeling guilty at the same time.
To be at peace with your conscience,
you have to follow what your
conscience says.
To follow what your conscience says,
you must have the will power to do
all the right things.
To do all the right things, you have
to forgo some of your
luxuries/comforts.
How many people of our modern times
are ready to forgo their
luxuries/comforts to do all the
right things? Modern day
luxuries/comforts can give only
temporary satisfaction, not lasting
happiness. So while we have people
owning many modern day gadgets,
there is no happiness within them.
They live with many a guilt and some
shallow materialistic comforts. That
is why smiles and laughs are merely
put on for the world to see and they
come and go equally rapidly. -
Rajesh - Dec. 16, 2006
We
all wonder about this issue. Deep
inside most of us with good moral
education, do realize the truth as
you all stated that money
essentially cannot buy happiness. It
seems to be that, as we have
population explosion all around,
people are finding it extremely
difficult and challenging to lead a
righteous life. So they now mentally
adjust themselves and resort to some
degree of "less pain and more gain"
or the short cut and hope to be
happy at the same time.
It's true that there are more jobs
nowadays, however, if you look
closely into these high paying jobs,
you get a feeling that it is kind of
hyped. These days even if someone
earns 1 lakh per month, they feel
it's not enough. Compare this to,
not so long ago (about 10 years
back) where you had to slog like
anything to get admission to proper
colleges in your 10th and 12th
exams. Then worry in college if you
are going to get a job or not. I can
account for myself, that the day I
got my 1st job I was so happy which
I have not felt ever since. It was
not at all a high paying job but it
was enough to sustain myself.
However, if I would have got an
equivalent job in today's world
(taking inflation into account) I
get a feeling that I would not have
been half as pleased. Why? As today
you will see other people easily
making twice as much with half the
effort. So as I look around due to
peer pressure and society I start to
feel sad so what do I do get some
training and jump into these high
paying jobs and then find myself sad
again as I am not doing something
which I necessarily enjoy, I am
doing it for easy money. So, I am
spreading this same virus of "I will
rather be rich and miserable than
happy and broke".
I still remember one comedy show on
Doordarshan where they showed one "imaandar
guy" in the zoo as a show piece as
his "kind" were on the brink of
extinction. How funny and how true
is that? - Subrata Sannigrahi -
Dec. 17, 2006
"Less pain and more gain", the short
cut and easy money all sound good
when we are talking about oneself.
When others do the same, they make
our lives miserable and we call them
corrupt. How can we hope to be happy
when the virus of "I will rather be
rich and miserable than happy and
broke" spreads to others and they
start enjoying the things we want
for ourselves? Remember we are the
units with which society is built. -
Rajesh -
Dec. 18, 2006 |
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