The pursuit of happyness

nope.. tts not a typo.. its spelled 'happyness'

well, its e title of a show on the life story of Chris Gardner, im sure the title more than explains itself on what it is about.. while its powerful msg is not lost on me, it does however bring up many questions which i struggled with myself till this day..

theres a particularly powerful scene of wall street, where the corporate highfliers plying their trade seems all smiles and happy with their life. its a scene which will probably only hold true in the world of movies.. of the many times u get to interact with ur peers, parents and juz friends around you, how many complain abt studies, work and life in general? how many are genuinely happy with their life rite now?

In many instances, ive heard people complaining abt how sad their fate is, and how they are being forced to run the rat race. to them, i would like to post a pertinent question. Why run?

Indeed, why run? in the many years of education, we are told that equipping ourselves with more knowledge, we are able to seek out a better life and future for ourselves. we are told that ultimately, we are working towards that happyness that we craved since young.

now pause a while, hold it right dere.. why then, the more we study, the more we garner knowledge and experiences and progress further in life in itself, we seem less and less satisfied with life itself?

"the older i am, the more unhappy i get and the more i complain.." doesn tt seem so familiar these days? well, aren we supposed to be working towards happyness? why then are we getting less and less happy?

to many opponents of this notion they would say, well u have to put in the amount of hardwork and grit to attain the holy grail.. hmm.. well, is that road to genuine happyness a road fraught with sorrows and sadness? isn it ironic then, to finally get ur hands on happyness, u must first stuff ur pockets full of sorrows and disappointments?

ok den, so be it if we needa work hard for it.. but juz for the innocuous mind, how do we know if we arrived? what would be the scale of measurement? cash? spending power? sense of achievement? fulfillment?

"nope, ull juz know it when u arrived"

hmmm, sounds juz about right.. but hold on, if happyness is ur personal benchmark, if its wad u set for yourself.. why shldn u go easy on urself and reach that benchmark everyday or even every min of ur life? if its true then, dun the previous notion of attaining happyness thru hard work n all tt dun count, if uld juz lower ur benchmark?

to surmarise all tt, if happyness is the carrot, we wld be the donkey.. we move on in life, spurned on by the belief that we'll attain our ideal. but our ideal keeps moving away from us..

well den, so how to get that happyness we so crave?

in the long winding road called life, perhaps all we need to do is to pause and ponder, perhaps happyness is alwis around, we juz needa reach for it behind our backs..