On happiness….

What really is happiness. Is it a mood or a state of mind, can it be defined as a result of some chemical reaction in mind or could it be explained philosophically or psychologically.  Is it a kind of thing that last only for few moments, few days or ‘happiness’ could last for months and years. 

Interesting questions, huh. I actually began thinking about this while re-watching last scenes of ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ (by the way, one of my favorites Will Smith again rock here ). A homeless person, a single parent, one who even sell his blood for bread & butter, suddenly came to know he has got a very nice decent job (of course after lot of hard work in internship) and then there he is standing. Just trying to figure out how to react, how to celebrate, how to communicate this to his loved ones, and even before this all, what exactly to call his feelings. Happiness, that is happiness! 

But I wonder how long it would have lasted for Chris Gardner (For those who haven’t watched ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’, movie was based on real rags-to-riches story of Chris Gardner– a self-made millionaire). Okay he got the job, that’s great, he must have then moved to decent home, admitted his son to nice school, have got good clothes to wear and food to eat, that’s all fine and wonderful. But then what, then he would have joined the job and it would have been as hectic, grueling, demanding as one can imagine, there would have been late-sittings, taking work to home and all these kind of things, would he be happy then? Don’t forget the fact, he literally went from homeless and only pennies-in-pocket past to nice decent job and home life-style. Still won’t the day-to-day tensions of job have tainted the sparkle of happiness on his face and mood. If I put myself in his place, I feel this might have happened to fate of my happiness feelings.  As one of my senior used to say, happiness only last between you got your appointment letter and till you join your job, or between you get admission letter from some top-ranking university and till you attend first class – rest is all same routine life with routine moods and feelings. 

And that is my point, happiness has very short life, a moment, an hour, a day, and maximum a week, and then it dies, or goes down in the feelings stack with other feelings taking the top positions. We humans have very short memory and we get overwhelmed by day-to-day affairs quite easily instead of having a panoramic view of what happened to us and what we are doing and where we are heading. Is it because of this reason that almighty Allah has called humans in general as ungrateful!

 Most surely man is ungrateful to his Lord. – Al-Adiyat (Ayah 6 – Parah 30)