Stop Reserving Happiness

I still remember my decade-old remark that I made to a friend in high school, “I am waiting for the moment when I would be settled in life so that I can live happily afterwards.” By ‘settled’, I meant to have a good comfortable job, a lavish bank balance and a charming life partner by a certain age.”

What more a person can expect beyond a bounty like this. I used to think.

By the time, final year of engineering approached, the thrill to secure a job would be palpable on all young faces including mine.

And why not, our parents had invested so much on us and have expectations to see us working in reputed companies. Besides everything, financial independence is afterall the key both to survival and a sense of accomplishment.

Today, at 28 years of age, when I look from the precinct of my tall office building, I don’t see a straight road leading towards it. In the same way, a tumult of criss cross paths seem to be going out. It dictates that job is clearly not the ultimate destination for a grown up as it is for a teenager.

Maybe everyone like me is looking for new avenues which keep emerging out of dynamic experiences and growing needs of life. Maybe not.

As I lean back in my chair, I feel hunkered down under the weight of responsibilities of what I used to think as ‘settled life.’ while my eyes whip around to find zombie-looking creatures rattling on their computers, their closest associate. Then, I wonder if I too look no different from them.

I feel worried about the next stage of life, marriage. And by now, it appears certain that it’s not the end. There would be further stages…Children, their education, their marriage, post retirement goals, and it goes on. So, where’s the point of satisfaction?

On the other hand, I feel equally envious when I find the same mechanical zombies deeply imbued with their work. Despite being busy, they atleast seem to be not having any second thoughts. Atleast their mind is not churning with riveting ideas.

At moments like these when I feel questions popping up as a daisy chain inside of me, one of which is about the cause for this unnatural emptiness, I look around for help. Eventually, the less zombie-like person, my 35-year old friend turns up to listen. She is a very cheerful woman blessed with two children and often carries a tinge of smile on her face.

“Are you contented with everything you have ?” Quite blankly, I asked her.

She gives it a thought, as if musing over an instant calculation. “It’s not that I have got everything I wanted. I just stopped thinking about things I couldn’t do because of my in-laws and responsibilities towards family. Such things keep me worried. But, there is no point in mulling over what I have absolutely no control on.”

What she said left me with voids even deeper than before.

Maybe I had disturbed her peaceful state of mind and triggered a chain of thoughts for her she had been avoiding to attend.  But, this experience along with other such observations made me realize that as the time moves ahead, life keeps getting more complicated with not one moment where one can stop and say, “that’s it! My  life is fulfilled.” It’s a staircase with elusive end. Before, we could sense that we have reached, it keeps unfolding itself further and further. And during this journey, each person is carrying a smiling mask on their face while deep down lies a whirlpool of pastering thoughts coming from the rising pressure of every upward step.

But, we feel the terrible ache only when we look back. We miss to have appreciated the easy phases of life where we were planning to rather do the complicated things.

That’s the reason why a student would barely ever say that he loves going to school or college. While the laudable poetry on such topic is often written by grown-ups or the retired folks.