If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands...

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands...

I love this children's song. It is a beautiful song. It also makes me think, every time, that it is possible to be happy and NOT know it. As a matter of fact, it is usually the case. We are happy most of the times and we don't know it and hence fail to clap. Normally we realize that we were indeed happy when the happiness goes away for some reason. So while the happiness is there, it is taken for granted more often than not. 

For example, when I started on my long journey of struggle with physical pain 7 years ago, I was in deep anguish. As I was going from doctor to doctor and healer to healer, I went to a Reiki master and I complained about my back which was hurting so bad that I couldn't breathe a sane breath. She said something to me that was so profound and yet so simple that it stayed with me ever since. She said:

"You are cursing your back now but did you ever stop to think and be grateful that all these 29 years you lived, your back served you so beautifully? It supported you, carried you, catered to every demand you made of it and didn't even let you feel it existed. Were you happy and thankful then?"

No, I wasn't. I was too busy going about routine business of life and I never stopped to 'live'. 

Today I am also aware that there is another kind of happiness, that is the real happiness, that does not depend of external stimuli. It comes from within where there is an eternal source of joy and bliss. Here I am not talking of that happiness. I am talking about ordinary day-to-day happiness that does depend on external factors. There is so much abundance of that too. I have the opinion that if a person decides to go on living, no matter how miserable he thinks he is, his happiness quotient is more than the sadness quotient, whether he knows it or not. 

Now knowing it has its own benefits (that's where the clapping part comes). When we know it, we feel better. And secure and taken care of. That's when we attract more of it. 

Being happy and not knowing is like sitting on a treasure and dying of hunger. How stupid is that!   

Today when I am done with that pain episode (seemed to have learnt what it had to teach me), every time, and I mean EVERY time, I sit, especially on the floor, I am so thankful to my back and the whole universe supporting it that I can't describe in words.

We don't have to go through hardships to know we had so much happiness to start with, you know. There are easier ways.  

Today, no matter what, I am happy and I know it and I do clap my hands!  

Bed of roses is no bed of roses

It has been bugging me for a while now. This nagging feeling... of getting it easy. Easy is not easy after a while. On the surface, it would appear that a life devoid of complications and struggles would be an ideal and desirable one.  But really, is it so?

When life gets into a comfortable rut and there is nothing exciting to look forward to, life energy gets drained out. It is interesting to note that laborers working on the road in scorching heat, farmers in the field and people who work hard, just to have two meals a day never seem to be out of that ‘spark’ or life energy. You will see a twinkle in their eyes. It’s the listless and bored people of well-off community who go into depression.

Sometimes I feel depression is a luxury disease that only people ranking high in hierarchy of needs can afford. This is not to offend or mock people who suffer from depression. I myself have seen highs and lows of life in quite some details.  

    

I know people who don’t need to do anything for survival and they can sleep all they want, but the problem is that... they can’t. Not even the healthy amount. And the sleep a laborer will have after a hard day is nothing but a distant dream to them. It never ceases to amaze me how God or Universe, whatever you may call it, has made everything so ‘balanced’ in its unique way.

The money, the recognition, the reward, the sleep that you ‘earn’ by really working with all you’ve got is what you cherish the most. The taste of water you drink after running a few kilometers in desert in simply beyond words.

So, it seems we need to have a sense of ‘mission’ to get that adrenaline flowing. We do know at an abstract level that we are but a tiny speck in the scheme of things. Even then, self-worth and accomplishment are not only hard to beat, they are necessary for a healthy survival. Perhaps this has been coded into us this way so that we can contribute to the Universe in our own way.

“Wow! I contributed this!” is one of the “high”-est emotions a human can feel!