Happiness is what we strive for all our lives. But we don’t call it by the name of happiness; we use other words, like a house, a car, a beautiful wife, money, children, so on and so forth. Happiness is just like the air around us, we don’t see it but we feel it through a light breeze or a hurricane.
All our life we give look for happiness in the objects that will give us happiness. When we have the money we may want to buy a new car or a house and when we buy them we feel very happy. Indeed these two are one of the biggest investments we make in our lives and we try to make it as perfect as possible. But then next year newer models of car will come with better features, and we will think if only I had waited one more year then I could have bought this one. Next year the price of property may go down and the same house could have been bought at 80% of the cost, or we might find a house with better design and more space next year. Then that tinge of sadness or an afterthought creeps in.
Same goes with a beautiful wife and children. 30 years from now she may not look beautiful or a terrible disease may scar her beauty. The children whom we so lovingly brought up may completely neglect or abuse us when we grow old. The relations that gave us happiness at one point of time may become a cause of pain later on.
We know these things and understand it also, nothing new about it. We cannot live without it also.
But happiness comes with other price tags also. From the above examples we know that objects which we attach with happiness are unreliable. Happiness is a state of mind and objects are manifestations of the mind which cause the delusion of happiness. Even the richest man with all the pleasures of life we will never be happy all the time.
Our mind is always in a constant state of fluctuation and worrying is one of the major cause of it. At all point of time we are worrying about something or the other. This worrying comes from the non acceptance of reality. We want everything around us to be in a constant state so that we don’t have to worry about any change specially a bad change. But it doesn’t happen that way, whether we like it or not. Once we accept that both good and bad things will happen to us and we have to accept that reality as it is. So acceptance of change becomes a price tag for happiness.
We all have pessimistic thinking; some have less some have more, same goes with optimism. A pessimist will think that something bad is going to happen in situation, and optimist will think that the outcome will be good. And when something happens as per their ‘ism’ then both will use the phrase ‘see, I said that beforehand’. The third type is the realist; he will assess a situation and prepare or at least plan something for both the outcomes. The realist will not sit back idle with the optimism or the pessimism only. So being realist is a price tag for happiness.
The most common thing is comparison with others, which we most commonly do. Even here also we tend to compare our earnings and feel happy or sad, some will accept and some not. For every tangible and intangible thing we tend to compare ourselves with others and it is a cause of lot of mental agony. Being content with what we have is a quality which we seldom possess. So the feeling of contentment is a price tag for happiness.
Pain, by pain I mean the psychological pain of a broken love affair or marriage, a difficult childhood and things like that. In this case the mind goes into a negative mode of functioning. It is true that the scars of these things run deep and wreck havoc to the peaceful mental state, because we are always on the receiving end of these traumas. In such cases we are always harsh towards us and the world around. To turn around from such a situation requires forgiveness and the ability to move on, the ability to be compassionate about him. So forgiveness and moving on becomes a price tag for happiness.
There can be other price tags also but if we could just pay this price for our happiness then the deal is a profitable one.
Yes. I do agree. Happiness too has a price tag. In life there is no free lunch , everything has price tag attached to it. The air you breath takes away a moment of your life. Happiness always comes when you fulfill your dreams. So if you want happiness , first you have to search what will give you happiness and to retain it needs lots of efforts and energy. That itself is a heavy price for happiness.