What is a happy life? Are you leading one?

Is there ever a life that is settled and sorted? In all aspects? Or at least the basic ones that matter the most? Have you enjoyed a phase(s) when you felt everything was where it should be? Is it everlasting. No? How long does such phase(s) usually lasts? There may be no clear-cut answers, or may be yes, there are for you. Is it really about the things that happen or is it about the perspective? What is the foundation of a happy life? Food, clothes, house, good health, loving family, education, access to basic facilities, friends, good life partner, children, source of living, yearly holidays, healthy old age…Do you need all these aspects to lead a happy life? Primarily yes, and then a No.

Most of us may be having it all. So I ask you? Are you happy? Mostly? Or are you perennially waiting for the happy future? Or are you content taking pride in your glorious past?Or are you striving for a happy tomorrow while being happy now? Or are you striving for a happy tomorrow while being unhappy now? We all may have diagonally opposite expectations and different solutions for the same problem. Some of us are content with the simple things that life offers. Basic amenities, socially acceptable presence, decent earnings, a typical family hierarchy…In short, a social structure or an image where we are not shining distinctly from others for our life choices. We are one with the crowd and enjoy wide acceptance.

Then there are those of us who are discontent, for nothing ever happened our way. We mix well in the society but are always boiling inside. A volcano of unfulfilled expectations, contrasting views, the desire to shake it all, bubbling with ideas but not knowing what to do with them. We have no control over outside circumstances. We do all that content people we talked about above do. We follow the same societal structure and flow except we do it with anger, frustration and resentment. We are wired differently but our life journeys don’t end up differently. We resist everything before we accept it. Because, we are lost with the path. For instance, for the longest time ever, we may question the institution of marriage and yet, end up getting married, albeit late. We may not want to pursue a 9-5 job, or we are born in a business family and crave for a simple 9-5 professional route. Either ways, we are stuck in the rut all the while having the urges to defy the social norms but lost with the directions.

Then, there are us who are discontent but make a spectacular success out of rebellion. We manage to chart our own course. Successful, confident, accepted with great pride in society. We have ditched the formal education path and are highly successful professionals today. We dared to defy the institution of marriage and made a great success of the single life we chose. We threw to the wind the typical life cycle of domesticity and succeeded with elan to achieve that “envious” life of world travel, friend groups, social events; an elitism in just about everything. We have rebelled and succeeded in showing to the world we were right too.

And then there are umpteen stories of variant life patterns. Someone having a reservoir of talent but no success (I saw Amit Kumar, son of Kishore Kumar, in the Kapil Sharma show and wondered how a talented singer went unnoticed). We may be someone craving for a perfect marriage and kids and not getting one. We may be someone who is married, wanting a divorce simply because we have outgrown the marriage (like the character in the book “Eat, Pray and Love?” or Priyanka Chopra in Dil Dhadakne Do where she says in my favourite scene…She: “We are not compatible, mom. Mom: Yes, beta but what is the problem?”).

We may be someone who is a king and aspires to be a monk. We may be the one who is born poor but dreaming to be rich, and failing in spite of the efforts, someone wanting to be a sailor but becoming a software engineer, someone being “the man” of the house and not wanting to earn for the family. Someone being a house-lady refusing to perform household chores and raise kids. (Why did we marry then? Well, is that only what marriage is always for? To earn and look after the house and produce kids? Can there be no in-between?)

We may be children wanting to skip formal education and looking for the inner calling in the Himalayas. We may be the women born with a silver spoon, who travels the world, drink wine and work for the NGO. We can afford to party and “have fun”. Is it okay to lead life this way? Is a life without struggles worthless? How do you know? and how do you not know? The patterns can be innumerable. Scattered all across but hidden from the world. They are unheard and unreported. They barely exist for us, but they are there.

I ask you again. Are you happy? Are you exactly at the point where you want to be? Or is there a subtle, hidden emotion of “I wish…it was like this…” Please share your views and let me know in which phase you are in. What do you actually aspire for or are content with?

For a different life perspective, click here and here .