Happiness

There was a time when chain emails and forwarded emails were commonplace, we used to get some good stuff to read and appreciate, but the good stuff was hidden in a huge stack of unwanted and eccentric forwards. One had to go through a lot of forwards to actually find something worth reading twice or even better, worth sharing with others.

That time has passed, or maybe I have lost contacts who used to send me that stuff . However, I recently received a forward and found it to be quite nice. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I agree with all that is said, or share the author’s opinions exactly, but it is something I would definitely like to share with my readers. Unfortunately, I could not locate/ identify the author of this piece, as this email had been going around for a while before it ended up in my inbox. So, if the original author happens to stumble upon my blog, please let me know and I shall be more than happy to give them due credit.

So here is the email for your perusal, untouched and un-edited (please ignore some grammatical and spelling errors):

Yesterday, I was driving, and the FM radio went off for few seconds. I thought, I should have an iPod. Then suddenly I realized that I have not used my iPod in last 6 months. And then, more things, Handy cam in last 2 years, Digital Camera in last 2 months, DVD player in last 1 month and many more. Now I can say that I bought that Handy cam just out of impulse, I have used it twice only in last 4 years.

So, what’s wrong and where? When I look at myself or my friends I can see it everywhere. We are not happy with what we have but all are stressed and not happy for the things we don’t have. You have a Santro, but you want Ci! ty; You have a City, but you want Skoda. Just after buying a new phone, we need another one. Better laptop, bigger TV, faster car, bigger house, more money, and .I means, these examples are endless. The point is, does it actually worth? Do we ever think if we actually need those things before we want them?

After this, I was forced to think what I need and what I don’t. May be I didn’t need this Handy cam or the iPod or that DVD player. When I see my father back at home. He has a simple BPL colour TV, he doesn’t need 32″ Sony LCD wall mount. He has a cell phone worth Rs 2,500. Whenever I ask him to change the phone, he always says, “It’s a phone; I need this just for calls.”

And believe me; he is much happier in life than me with those limited resources and simple gadgets. The very basic reason why he is happy with so little is that he doesn’t want things in life to make it luxurious, but he wants only those things which are making his life easier. It’s! a very fine line between these two, but after looking my father’s life style closely, I got the point. He needs a cell phone but not the iPhone. He needs a TV but not the 32″ plasma. He needs a car but not an expensive one.

Initially I had lot of questions.

I am earning good; still I am not happy…why?

I have all luxuries; still I am stressed…. ……. why?

I had a great weekend, still I am feeling tired…… why?

I met lot of people, I thought over it again and again, I still don’t know if I got the answers, but certainly figured out few things. I realize that one thing which is keeping me stressed is the “stay connected” syndrome. I realized that, at home also I am logged in on messengers, checking mails, using social networks, and on the top of that, the windows mobile is not letting me disconnected. On the weekend itself, trying to avoid unwanted calls and that is keeping my mind always full of stress. I realized that I am spending far lesser money than what I earn; even then I am always worried about money and more money. I realized that I am saving enough money I would ever need, whenever needed. Still I am stressed about job and salary and spend.

May be, many people will call this approach “not progressive attitude”, but I want my life back. Ultimately it’s a single life, a day gone is a day gone. I believe if I am not happy tonight, I’ll never be happy tomorrow morning. I finally realized that meeting friends, spending quality time with your loved one’s; spending time with yourself is the most important thing.

If on Sunday you are alone and you don’t have anybody to talk with, then all that luxuries life, all that money is wasted. May be cutting down your requirements, re-calculating your future goal in the light of today’s happiness is a worthwhile thing to do. May be selling off your Santro and buying Honda City on EMIs is not a good idea. I believe putting your happiness ahead of money is the choice we need to make.

I think, a lot can be said and done but what we need the most is re-evaluation of the value of happiness and time we are giving to our life and people associated with it.

Think about it……

Reading this reminded me of the emails I had archived from the times when forwards were common and prevalent, maybe I should re-visit my archive and see if I find anymore of such emails worth sharing.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day ahead…

Agur

THE KING AND THE FALCONS :

Here is something i read recently, and thought would be nice to share, hope you enjoy it too:

Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons from Arabia. They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.

Months passed and one day, the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.

The king summoned healers and sorcerers from all the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly. He presented the task to the member of his court, but the next day, the king saw through the palace window that the bird had still not moved from its perch.

Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, “May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he cried out to his court, “Go and get a farmer.”

In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, “Bring me the doer of this miracle.”

The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?”

With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, ” It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting.”

We are all made to fly — to realize our incredible potential as human beings.

But instead of doing that,we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us.

The possibilities are endless, but for most of us, they remain undiscovered.

We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling.

So let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight.

– From the Book ” Why walk when you can fly “

Piuraa

The Fountainhead – Gail Wynand

Since long I have been meaning to write about excerpts from The Fountainhead, but haven’t gotten a chance to open the book, read a couple of pages and then pen down my thoughts. Finally I have a small post about someone from the Fountainhead. This is about one of the character’s in the book, Gail Wynand. If you have read the book already, please continue reading, if you haven’t read the book, SPOILERS ALERT!

Gail Wynand a name known far and wide as a magnate of the media. He was a man who had made a life of his own with his own blood and sweat. Much like every great character in a movie or a book, he had a bad childhood and then worked like shit to attain the impossible. He did attain it very soon by the age of 35, which to me seems quite a lot. By 40 he was rich beyond the wildest dreams of a common man. Running papers, magazines and newsletters across the country, offices in every part of the country; owing buildings, hotels, estates, even mini-cities. He, obviously, ventured in the areas where everyone suggested otherwise. Investing in barren lands only to turn them into a magnificent 5 star hotel, buying battered buildings and remodeling them to sell at 10 times the price, buying paper mills just to supply the perfect quality of paper to his publishing houses; he did it all. Sure he spent his early life’s earnings on his business, as one might expect, with no regard for his life’s condition. I remember there was a sentence somewhere, “he lived in a cramped studio apartment when the journalists of his papers were staying in grand suites”. So he did it all.

The reason why I wanted to write something down for him is this:

He owned a yatch, it was named ‘I Do’. A lot of women who he took to the yatch asked what was the meaning of this name, or its significance, to be more precise. And owing to his money, and obviously again, he was arrogant in nature; so his reply would be, it’s not for you to know. Or maybe something similar, I don’t remember the exact words. But then in a later part in the book, he tells Dominique Keating (after, they get married) its real meaning. She asks him the same question, “What does it mean?” he says, “it’s an answer to all the people who told me in my early life ‘You don’t run things around here’”.

Well this really appealed to me. Whatever the type of a person he was, this was a very beautiful answer in a very beautiful way to the world.

Head Aega