On Happiness...# 1

Today I read an interview by Tal Ben-Shahar in TOI[Sunday, 18th Feb 2007] where he has summarized the essentials of happy living!?! It is of course based on personal experience and working at his own pat discomfiture. The header of the Interview says that he has paid some tributes to Hinduism & Buddhism.This vindicates the ancient wisdom of the sages and seers, even in our very modern and rational times. Material wealth does not ensure 'happiness' which has more to do with the mind than with what we have. The happy state of mind that follows the fulfillment of our cherished wishes will stay at peak for a few hours to a few days. The euphoria wears off and you are back to searching for something afresh to feed happiness fuel.

Of the several things that he[Tal B-S] suggests I found one thing particularly relevant to me. This is summarized as Lesson 2: [In a box titled Happiness Lessons ]. To quote:

" Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning.Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable [bold mine]. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters [ bold mine], moments throughout the week that provide you with pleasure and meaning. "

This is what I have been using to keep myself going without deteriorating the feeling of richness in the life that has been mine till date. As a professional engineer I had my dreams when I entered service: of making a significant contribution to technology within the boundaries of company policy. There was hardly any activity [that could be classified as a challenge] that led to developing technology, within our enterprise. In our enterprise all developments were driven by customer demand or insistence. None of the lofty self-initiated, inner-drive fuelled heralding of technology was possible. A company driven only by goals of maintaining the bottom lines, with the proportional amounts of turnover that were the dictates of the market and political situations that obtained in the country, rather than by any kind of insight or foresight or deliberate planning, had little to offer in terms of professional satisfaction that could have gone to make those 'highs' in one's professional life, an important component of happiness.

In the initial years, I had somatized this 'dissatisfaction' into bouts of hyper acidity and then the same manifested as migraines. The medical books tell us that migraines have, apart from food allergies, unfulfilled aggressiveness(UA) as one of the possible reasons. I tend to identify with UA as the chief reason, in my case. The first decade and a half I was battling the 'emptiness' of my professional life by trying to shift department, I mean work area, but then with company policy revolving around turnovers and bottom lines.

The one or two opportunities that lasted as brief as 47 to 50 days in my nearly two-and-a-half decades of professional life, pales in comparison to the years added to my life. If today I am better adjusted to the situation that obtains in my life which I call as a less than mediocre existence, it is only because I learnt the futility of pursuing the 'richness' that I desired in the environment I was in. So, I turned to the other passion of my younger days which was on a low key because of my being busy with enriching my professional life with relevant kind of experience.

Yes, I dusted my Sanskrit books somewhere along the line may be around 1984-89, and later more off and on, then again after 1999-2000. I read with absorption and lot of struggle to understand Kashika by Vamana and Jayaditya[K by V& J]. The challenge of piecing together this near-cryptical 'elucidation' of Panini's seminal work on Sanskrit Grammar viz., The Ashtadhyayi has given me sleepless nights and frustrated me often. This has satisfied my technical knowledge seeking appetite which I badly missed in my Engineering Life. I have always wondered on the technical perfection of Panini's systematization of Sanskrit Grammar. V & J have stayed faithful to the Panian order of the Vyakarana Sutras, bringing into relief the excellently organized Mind of Panini.It has ever been a treat to my mind since. For this, has triggered my creativity with the promise and prospect having my ideas bearing fruit, without the need of external help unlike in the case of following Engineering Excellence.

Thus it has been V&J's book which has kept my spirits high giving me a sense of accomplishment filling the emptiness of the lack in Engineering Excellence. I hope to see some very meaningful output coming in a few years from now and depending only on me. Swami Vivekananda has defined true education as the unfolding of the knowledge within. True ! one cannot really accept anything that is at variance form one's experience.