17 Mar 2009

Am I happy now?

I was a kid then.  Very young.  Diwali was about a month or so away.  We had bought new clothes.  My mom said we'd buy fire crackers in a few days.  We would make sweets and special food for eating on the day of Diwali.  So many new and exciting things for Diwali!  I was keenly awaiting the day of celebration, when we would be spending the day gloriously and having a lot of fun.  The day before Diwali I was extremely happy since my wait was approaching an end.

I woke up on the Diwali day and looked around.  Everything was just as normal as it had always been.  I wore new clothes, ate good food, burst crackers.  I did it all, but it wasn't half as fun as waiting for this day.  This is when I found that most celebrations are over-hyped.

Today as I was taking a bath I realised something.  I found that there's no happiness or worries, good or bad about the present -- all these classifications make sense only for the past and the future.  In Tamil movie Virumaandi, the hero says this dialogue "when man experiences happiness he doesn't know what happiness is" (சந்தோஷம்னா என்னன்னு அதை அனுபவிக்கும்போது மனுஷனுக்கு தெரியறதில்லை).

"When I had just broken my leg and this kind person was taking me to the hospital, the pain was a terrible experience," I told a friend sometime back.  As I was saying this I knew I was lying.  Because it wasn't such a bad experience.  We realise pain and pleasure only later, after that moment has passed away.  Or in advance, when we're expecting it to happen in the future.  Things are just what they are, they are neither good nor bad. When we think about them we label them for whatsoever reason I don't understand.

I only wanted to record what I found today.  This post is incomplete now, and I don't know how to complete it.  For now I'll just leave it here and move on.  Maybe I'd complete it later, if I find how to do it.

5 comments:

  1. "We realise pain and pleasure only later, after that moment has passed away. Or in advance, when we're expecting it to happen in the future." -- Is it so? Ask someone to hit u hard..U'll know wht pain is! :P Whn we talk about living in the moment, it's more about NOT re-living your past or imaging ur future...but to accept & live in the present moment. Life has problems..we can do nothing abt them...This is wht my coach said: In life u get chocolate ice cream and u r asked to choose! The fact is that there is ONLY chocolate ice cream...no choice! so u better accept it and move on! Don't ponder how things would have been if things were different! It's a waste of time n cause of ur miseries. Happy or sad-live the moment and move on! "Life is emty and meaningless and it is empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless." :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. When someone hits me I will be in pain. Right that moment I will only living the pain -- neither happy nor sad. (There is difference between pain and misery, if you haven't noticed it yet.) When I analyse what happened and attach a label to it, problems start. This is what I am trying to say.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But pain leads to misery..you can't be in pain only...it will definitely make you miserable. Pain leads to suffering or misery. It's easy to be logical about it, but I don't think that's how pain works!

    ReplyDelete
  4. "But pain leads to misery"

    Pain leads to misery ONLY when you think about it later on -- or you imagine that it's going to happen to you. The same pain leads a masochist to pleasure. In other words, happiness and misery are only in our minds -- not in the external world.

    ReplyDelete
  5. When I am in pain I am sad n suffering. Everything is happening NOW! I am NOT living in the future. If I think about the pain later in life and relive the moment..then only I am imagining the misery as I am NOT miserable at that moment of imagination.

    ReplyDelete