Bits & pieces of happiness, living in the moment, etc.

Living in the moment, it is said, defines intrinsic happiness. Planning to soak in happiness in a stipulated time or an event in the future is an illusion. Whatever we do, if we put our heart and mind in to it and if we live in ‘that’ moment, we become happy. Worries never cease to exist, even unconsciously and unintentionally. Whether you are the president of the United States or you are a newspaper hawker in India, whether you are Bill Gates or you are a homeless person, worries will never leave you. Reflecting over the past to rectify ourselves for the future is a wise thing to do. But living in the past isn’t. Similarly, planning for the future is a practical and realistic thing to do, like life insurance, saving money for our kids and for medical emergencies, etc. But living in the future isn’t. Reflecting on the past and dreaming on the future should just be our assets which should enable us to soak in happiness and fulfillment in the present moment. Now I am sounding like one of the thousands of motivational speakers who ‘inspire’ people to be happy. They write books on ‘how’ to be happy and ‘how’ to stop worrying. I have read a few of them, but unfortunately despite the amazing nature of the books, I never learnt ‘how’ to be happy by reading those. It is of course very easy to gauge that reading books on ‘how to be happy’ can’t make you happy unless you want to be happy.  One of the elementary ideas to ‘be happy’ is to ‘live in the present’. There has been one TED talk too on this:

(http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment.html),

where the speaker proves with surveys and statistical studies that no matter what we do (except while having sex), we are never fully absorbed in the activity for 100% of the time. Even in activities like working, or meditating or studying, we usually tend to focus or concentrate only 30% of the time on the actual activity. Interestingly, activities like conversation and playing a game tend to increase this percentage, which I guess is because there is another person involved in such activities. For instance, if you do not try to put concentration on the game of tennis or badminton that you are playing, it will show up easily and you’ll lose the game even with your equals! So the speaker claims that most of the time, we tend to either think about our past or our future, and hence our happiness index for the present moment decreases. But if we think and try to focus on the exact present, that is, on the work that we’re doing right now, then the level of intrinsic satisfaction does increase. 

Sure happiness in not a planned event but I do feel excited the whole of Friday thinking that I will be going to watch a late night show of a nice movie releasing that weekend at a nearby theater, and I’m fortunate to have a few buddies who join me religiously every Friday night (or sometimes, on other nights if the movie is released earlier, for instance Life of Pi, which we saw today – Wednesday night). Thinking of an upcoming ‘happy’ event makes us feel excited and happy for the time preceding that event, for instance, someone waiting to drive to his/her parents for Thanksgiving break, someone expecting his/her baby soon, and so on. But in most cases, in moments immediately succeeding that event, we tend to feel a little sad, since the ‘happy’ moments have just got over. However, living in the present or trying to extract happiness from the present is an unfailing way to seek perpetual happiness, at least theoretically! 

I never learnt to be ‘happy’ by reading those inspirational or ‘happiness-guide’ books, but I have learnt to be at peace with myself and my ambience by trying to live in the present with a little bit of dream in to the future and even less retrospection in to the past. Claiming to be intrinsically happy is a laughable statement, for, if I am indeed happy within myself, then I don’t need to justify it to anyone, either in person or in blog. Thus I shall not claim or try to justify that I am ‘truly’ happy, but what I think I can claim is that, I am beginning to realize that waiting for a perfect moment in the future to deliver me a parcel of happiness at my door is a utopia, a myth. Instead, soaking in the present moment helps a lot. It may not provide the illusive ‘happiness’ but it indeed relieves me of my worries and tensions (for the future), eases out the brain, blankets me with a feel-good outlook and provides with a it’s-gonna-be-alright vibe. This in turn sets the mind for unexpected and unplanned activities through which I think I enable myself to remain at peace. To repeat, planning for the future is a practical and useful thing to do, but living in the future isn’t. 

Strolling on the west campus of our university on a bright and sunny afternoon, the rainbow-like pattern reflecting sunlight off the water fountain caught my attention. I gazed it for quite some time trying to ‘feel’ the colors, to be in synch with the warmth of the sunshine which gave me a deep feeling of how beautiful each moment of our life can be, how beauty can be so commonplace. 

 A friend called me one Saturday while I was running an experiment in lab: “Dude, we are gonna go to a place called so-and-so which is about an hour’s drive from here. It has beautiful colors. Do you want to come along?” I didn’t want to push the incomplete experiment to the next day, but realized it wasn’t a very critical experiment to finish that day. I had absolutely no idea where I was going to with my friends that afternoon, but said over the phone “Yes, you can pick me up from across the street from my department in 10 mins.” And the amazing memory of the place we visited will be an unforgettably delightful memory for me. It was one of the best unexpected-but-spontaneously-planned afternoons of my life. The serenity of the place and the warmth of the colors all around provided an overdose of intrinsic peace and happiness within my mind, which I can relish for years to come.

 

 

 It’s my fifth year in Columbus (or OSU) and ever since I’ve been here, there’ve been five autumns with the festival of lights Deewali celebrated by the Indian student community in OSU campus, and I never went to any of those because either I was too pre-occupied with my work or I wasn’t any more interested in a festival which would sadden me by reminding me of the hazy but sweet reminiscences of how I celebrated it with my parents more than a decade back. “Let’s pay a very quick visit to the Deewali open-air celebration near Mirror Lake, dude. There’ll be at least some desi sweets to eat,” a friend of mine told me just minutes before the event at 7:30 pm, and being an anti-Facebook person, I had absolutely no idea that the event was that day, in a few minutes. “Why not?” I thought. Although it was a humble and brief event with candles, sky-lanterns and some sparklers being lit, I felt so fresh, rejuvenated and happy, in my mind! Not only because I could see the happiness and smiles on the faces of all the students (including non-Indians) gathering there to soak in the lights of Deewali, but because I lit a candle and a sparkler in deewali after five goddamn years! It really felt amazing - a totally unexpected and feel-good event to cherish for years. 

It’s my fifth year in Columbus (or OSU) and ever since I’ve been here, there’ve been five Mirror Lake jumps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Lake_(Ohio)) in the Beat Michigan week in November in OSU campus, and I never went to any of those because either I was too pre-occupied with my work or I thought the jumps were simply an idiotic act. It’s usually very cold (often sub-zero Celsius) and chilly at this time of the year in Columbus, and (some) students pumped up with the enthusiasm for beating our arch-rivals Michigan in the last football game of the season, jump in to the biting cold water (sometimes iced-water) of the Mirror lake between 10 pm and 2 am of a weekday (Tuesday as of now) night preceding the game, shouting with fullest strength and loudness: ‘F*** Michigan’. Even excluding the fact that the super cold water would give shock to the body as you would jump in to it, there’s a high probability of catching a cold or flu as you’d walk back home, completely drenched and wet in that chilly night. Besides, the water there is dirty and raises probability of infection in cuts & wounds. Why would any sane person jump? OSU does not endorse or recommend this event, and ambulances and cops guard the entire area during this jump-event. 12000 students either jumped or were around the lake in the 2010 event, and 25 students had to be taken to emergency care in 2011. All for the sake of shouting F*** Michigan! I was 200% sure I would never jump last Tuesday night while the event was in progress but I went to stand nearby and observe (for the first time since I was in OSU!) how students were going crazy jumping into the super cold water and coming out shivering, and yelling/shouting loudly. It was fun. A friend of mine and I had come there from cleanroom after a tiring day. My friend, who was sure to jump, quickly changed his attire so as to jump, but I was in jeans and never intended to jump. This friend/colleague of mine skillfully convinced two random girls standing nearby to jump with him in to the lake. The girls were initially as steadfast as I was, in not jumping since they weren’t prepared. The girls and my friend eventually convinced me to do the unthinkable – to jump in that freaking cold water that night! Well, I believed in their words that “it’s gonna be a memorable night”, and lo & behold! I jumped with my shirt & jeans on, holding hands with my friend and the two girls (whose even names I am not aware of !), twice. Sure it was biting cold that numbed me for a few minutes as we came out of the water immediately. We all went crazy with cold, hugged each other and bid good-bye to the two girls who said while leaving “Thank you guys for making this one of the best memorable nights ever” and I walked back 15 minutes to my apartment, drenched and wet, at 1:30 am. But what a night it was!

It’s my fifth year in Columbus (or OSU) and ever since I’ve been here, there’ve been five Thanksgiving lunch hosted by the university for people who cannot go home to visit families during the week of Thanksgiving. But I never went to any of those lunches because either I was too pre-occupied with work or I didn’t care about eating a free American meal sitting with people whom I didn’t know at all. This Thanksgiving however, I thought “Why not?” I got tickets two days before the event. Against each university ID (called BuckID), one can get four tickets maximum (free of course). I got three, including one for myself and two for two of my friends – one who took me to Deewali and another who inspired me to jump into Mirror Lake. The food was really, really tasty (and filling), and the hospitality of the organizers was amazing. The warmth of the people all around was so overwhelming and the happiness so intoxicating that I deeply regretted today afternoon during the lunch for my foolishness and ignorance in not coming to this event for the last four years! I realized how much I have missed in life all these four years. What did I miss? I missed the bits & pieces of happiness and warmth in the smiles and hospitality of the people all around on this particular event; I missed speaking and chatting with complete strangers while eating lunch, strangers who would smile, tell good things and create an it’s-gonna-be-alright atmosphere. Seriously, living in the moment, soaking in happiness in seemingly small events in the present moment – such things are truly bliss! I am actually beginning to realize that waiting for a perfect happy-moment in the future is a mirage. 

 

Epilogue: A moment that stunned me.

Today afternoon while relishing the Thanksgiving lunch inside a large ballroom of the Ohio Students’ Union with my two friends, we chatted with the students (strangers, of course) sitting in front of and beside us. They were Chinese American students, and we were having a very good conversation on various aspects of different cultures, festivals (of India & China), and so on. One girl who was sitting just opposite to me (not seen in the picture above) was speaking to my friends: “You know when I went a few days back to collect tickets for this lunch, I thought they would swipe my BuckID to update the database as to who collected how many tickets. But surprisingly, they only wanted to have a glance at my BuckID.”

“Yeah, I just had to show my BuckID, that’s it” I interrupted her. 

She continued: “So I took four tickets, and then went there again the next day wondering if the organizers could identify me as a student who had already taken the maximum number of four tickets allowed on one BuckID. But happily, they couldn’t identify me. How could they? There were thousands of students who went to get tickets! And so I took four more tickets. Thus I got eight tickets on my BuckID.” And then she smiled, and we all laughed out loudly. But in my mind I was thinking: How cheap a person can be ! …but my thoughts were interrupted by what she was continuing to speak amid her smile:

“And then I gave all my other tickets to a few homeless persons on the street. Every year, OSU wastes so much of left-over food from this Thanksgiving lunch, I thought I’d reduce the waste a little bit and also help a few homeless people who I see every day on the streets.”