Friday, November 9, 2018

From womb to tomb


There is a huge hue and cry globally about living life happily. People talk a lot about their sorrow, miseries and hastily spread unhappiness. Certainly, this is done to shed the burden of unhappiness and try to obtain some happy moments. Every human being is craving to live life of the king size happily but without encountering the bitter fact, that the more you desire to be happy, more you need to put efforts. These efforts will assemble both, the positive and negative remarks, replies and its reaction leads to tough time with great turmoil.

What is being happy?
Being happy is a continuous process of feeling joy on accomplishment of fulfilled task. When a responsibility is given and when you do fulfill the assigned task as per the expectation set, it makes you feel delighted. Your exuberant feeling spreads smile or laugh. Contrary to this, the moment you fail to stand as per the set expectation, you are carried away by negative emotions which brings in you anger, fear and tears in your eyes. If you wish to be happy try not to set high expectation.

There is a boy named Raghu who works in a tea stall.  His duty is to serve tea when his master asks him to serve and after the tea is sipped by the people, he goes to collect the glasses, wash them, wipe them with a clean cloth and lay them in the tray so that his master can serve it to the other people.

Raghu is seen always with a smile on his face. He is just eight year old. When we look at him outwardly, he is deprived of a family, he has no scope of getting education, he has to earn his livelihood at this tender age when other kids of his age, enjoys the love and affection of their parents, go to school, learn and earn knowledge, friendship and have fun.

His happiness was pinching me. I wanted to know the reason of the gleam in his eyes, his never ending humming and the sweet smile. Let me admit, I was jealous of this little boy. I could hardly stop myself from questioning to this innocent boy;

Raghu, tell me one thing. I never saw you unhappy. Whenever I met you, you were seen delighted and was always smiling. Boy, I want to know, how can you be so happy every time?

Raghu said, “Di, I know that I may sound weird, but from the day I knew that I am alone, I never grumbled on being alone. I accepted this fact. When I see others, I can’t compare them with my life because I firmly believe that nobody would like to compare their life with mine. I don’t desire much because I know, with unfulfilled desires, I can only accumulate sorrows. I have limited my expectation. I start my day with thanks to the almighty God, and start my day with a broad smile on my face. The smile is the only thing that I keep reminding to myself. Every passer by, who stops here for a cup of tea, should be happy after sipping it. Hence, while serving and picking up the empty glasses, I just spread smile. Indeed, I have nothing than this smile which I can share. I also learnt that to spread smile is not that difficult only if you wish to share it with good thought in your mind.”

I heard him patiently and to acknowledge him, I did smile. What a wonderful lesson, this eight year old boy had shared!

From the day of our birth, entering the world of whims and fancies, out of mother’s womb to the time buried in the tomb, we keep grieving for all the wrong expectations that we have set. Setting expectation is not bad, but setting wrong expectation can be painful, lead to disaster and unhappiness. 
This unhappiness is contagious. When you are unhappy and meet some one very happy, you wish to attack his peace by telling him all the reasons of you being unhappy. Thus, affect his happy life.

Well, globally we are entangled with the same act. Instead of spreading happiness, our focus is more on killing others’ happiness leading to stiff, cut-throat and unhealthy competition, which in turn spread jealousy, hatred, pain, making our meticulous life miserable.

Limit and set right expectation to lead happy life…like Raghu.