Find Happiness Today: Quit Digging!

There is a law of holes. When you are in a hole, the first thing you need to do is to stop digging.

The road to happiness and satisfaction is full of potholes. Some of them are tiny, and only make your car sink and jump a bit. Others can swallow you up, car and all.

Most of us insist on digging our own holes, and then we work day and night to make them bigger. Yet we insist that we are pursuing happiness.

Desperation

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Why are people unhappy? Why are they dissatisfied?

Because they keep hurting themselves by making wrong choices.

Ignorance

We do not know where we want to go.

If you want to see the Eiffel Tower, you should go to Paris. If you follow the road to New York, and expect to see the Eiffel Tower there, you will be disappointed.

If you pursue material objects, and luxuries, and get no lasting joy, don’t be surprised. You’ve followed the wrong path.

We wear masks

“How are you doing?’ is no longer a question. We automatically answer, “Fine, thanks,” smile sweetly, and move on. Most of the day we have our party faces on. Smile, shake hands, say “Have a nice day,” and keep on trudging. How do we really feel deep inside? We dare not ask ourselves that, for the answer is too painful.

So we avoid introspection, we avoid solitude, we avoid serious thought.

We have a spouse, 1.5 kids, a house in the suburbs, two cars in the garage, and a free-range chicken in the pot. We must be happy.

We demand guaranteed results

An annual raise is considered a right. Whether the employee’s work is satisfactory or not.

We want all our kids to be A-students, to get on the honor roll, to gain admission to the college of their choice, to find marvelous jobs, earn tons of money, and live happily ever after.

Life does not always play out like that. Disappointments are inevitable. Yet we don’t always teach ourselves or our kids how to deal with them.

Instant gratification

This is one of the biggest holes you can dig for yourself.

Borrow several thousand dollars, fly off to Europe, live it up for a week, and then spend the next year or more trying to pay off the loan.

Buy a fancy car, just because your neighbor has one, and work overtime for five to ten years to meet the monthly payments.

Desires, expectations, and reality

Society does not teach us to control our desires. Newspapers, TV, magazines, the internet, all of them want us to buy, buy, buy. The latest phone, smart watch, smart car, smart socks.

We can no longer distinguish between what we want and what we truly need.

The consumer society and modern advertising create an insatiable demand for things displayed attractively in stores or on the internet. We buy the latest gadgets, and a month later, it is time for a different flavor. And we think this will make us happy.

There is also a disconnect between our expectations and reality.

Expectations

Desires keep surging in our bosoms. We then expect them to be fulfilled.

A college graduate expects immediate placement in the job market. If you get a Harvard MBA, you tend to think that companies will knock on your door day and night, and you will drown in offers to become the CEO of this company or the other right away.

Again, harsh reality often intervenes.

Patience and tolerance

Society has devalued these solid, age-old virtues to the point where they have become undesirable.

The modern prayer seems to be, “God give me patience, and please give it right now!”

This is another hole we dig for ourselves, impatiently flitting from pleasure to pleasure, unable to smell a rose and appreciate it fully before being drawn to another shiny flower, and then another.

Tolerance is not weakness

     Matra sparshastu Kaunteya sheetoshna sukhadukhadah

     Agamapyino anityaah taans titikshasva bharata  (Gita 2:14)

We blast the air conditioner to Arctic temperatures to keep out the warmth of summer, and set the thermostat to boiling to combat the chill of winter. Our predecessors did not die off in alarming numbers when the weather changed, but we demand a monotony of indoor temperatures, because we are unable to tolerate summer or winter. And our bodies become softer because of that.

In the verse above, Lord Krishna, a Hindu god, is teaching his disciple Arjuna the importance of tolerance. He says that feelings of heat and cold, pleasure and sadness, all arise from the interaction of external stimuli and our sense organs. All of these feelings are transient, they come and go, and you should therefore learn to tolerate them.

Transient feelings and emotions

This is yet another hole, a hole in our thinking.

We allow our understanding of reality to be so distorted that we cannot distinguish between what is transient, and what is permanent. Most sensory pleasures are transient. A shiny BMW loses its luster, and the heady new car smell, fairly swiftly. Down the road, it becomes just another car. Especially if our neighbor buys a gorgeous Ferrari. Which ceases to give him pleasure the moment the guy down the block buys a personal jet.

Emotions are the same. Nobody is angry all the time. Nobody is sad all the time (except in cases involving mental health problems). We need to learn to take the rough with the smooth, without getting bent out of shape. The tide does turn. One just needs patience and tolerance.

A cruise ship sails smoothly over the waves of the ocean. A row boat bobs up and down wildly with each wave, always on the verge of tipping over, making no forward progress.

As you negotiate life, which one would you rather be? You can read more about this here … http://goo.gl/xm1Mn9

Don’t dig holes for yourself!

• Being happy and satisfied is not that difficult.
• Mostly we need an attitude adjustment.
• We need to stop creating problems for ourselves, and then making them worse.
• Focusing on appropriate actions, keeping desires under reasonable control, setting realistic expectations, and having a clear-eyed view of reality will set us on the right path.
• Not letting transient set-backs knock us down, and learning to differentiate between the truly valuable, and merely fashionable, will stand us in good stead.
• Tolerance can build strength and happiness.

Want to read more?

These issues, and more, are discussed in further detail in my E-book, “How to Lead a Satisfying Life: 11 Universal Lessons from the Gita,” which is available here … http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W5TGM1U