Chasing An Illusion

A certain amount of gloominess and despondency surrounds me when I ponder a little too much about the meaninglessness of the world and its average life. After a certain point, we all seek to rise above the stereotypical mundane lives that we live, the same old routine jobs we do and superficial interactions that we enter into almost daily, either willingly or unwillingly but more so to feel accepted and make ourselves fit to be a part of this “shallow society”.  I may sound like someone who is tired of the mediocrity and hypocrisies that an average life demonstrates but I feel I am not alone in feeling so. There are many others who seek something deeper, more meaningful and something more gratifying to give life the perfect shape. 

In an endeavour to lend our lives the so-called perfection, we begin a perpetual hunt for things that is mostly believed to make the journey of life worthwhile. For each of us, the ideas and ways to attain perfect happiness and building an “ideal” life are different.  Most of us believe that having the top class luxuries at our disposal makes life happy and perfect while there are also a few who think that dedicating a significant part of their lifetime for the service of their loved ones and society at large can give them ultimate contentment. It‘s all a matter of personal opinion and I would not like to go into judging or arguing as to which way leads to greater happiness.  

When we talk of more happiness and more meaningful life, most of us do not even know how it can be achieved. Can only a grand and lavishly spent life be called meaningful and happy? Or simply living like a sevak or yogi offer a sense of complete fulfilment. What about a lot of people like me who neither have a king-size life, nor can completely dedicate ourselves to the cause of others because we too harbour some ambitions to get rich and famous and we too have our set of responsibilities that desists us from becoming completely selfless humans.  

A lot of people believe that secrets of happiness lie in exercising, meditation, setting goals, spending time with friends and family, experimenting with new things. All of these sound so familiar. From time to time, we are all reminded of these things and they may or may not work for us in bringing complete happiness. These nuggets may bring about bliss for us momentarily and ease the pain, but we will be fooling ourselves if we think that we can cut off every possible evil and negatives through these practises.  The reality is we cannot get rid of negative emotions all together.  Black, white and shades of grey are all required in life to make it more interesting and consequential.

We are trying to find the perfect happiness through our continuous hunt for perfection and we constantly involve ourselves into things that are said to bring joys but still deep within we feel incomplete. There is no single thing keeps us contended for long.  That’s human nature I guess. We can never have complete gratification by just one thing. There are no defined set of rules that can lead us to a perfect happy life. The whole idea of being perfect and happy is like a mirage. Happiness is a delusion. We are chasing an impossible dream when we run after things we believe would make our lives totally positive and perfect.

Greater sanity involves learning to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, accepting the weakness within and those in others, learning to cope with other’s negativity, find pleasure in the challenges that we are confronted with in our daily lives and to enjoy conflict and rise above them. Life is great but it also sucks at times– it’s a duality and we have to live with it. Enjoying to the fullest this life marked by the union of both happiness and pain should be our end goal.