Gaining wakefulness after rays of sunshine hits your face through the glass panes of the window. Looking around and mentally measuring the distance between your furniture and walls of your room, having avocado toast with exotic veggies that you don’t even know the benefits of, getting ready in a garment by Dior or Versace, going to work in a car that is so luxurious that everyone wants to be like you. Sounds like happiness, doesn’t it? At least that is what we were told.
Feeling restlessness for the things that are hard to get is second nature to humans. It makes us believe that the hole we have in our chest can only be filled by forbidden things. We crave for such things and chase after that milestone, that position, that bank balance without evaluating whether it is the societal conditioning that wants us to want it or will it make the little child in us giggle softly when we get hold of it. Without this self-awareness, we become our own enemies. Maybe, just maybe, the type of happiness that you want lies in the things that are already within us.
Maybe, it is when you finally notice a tree on the route you always take which you always overlooked because you always had somewhere to reach. You stop for a moment because you see such bloom only in pictures taken by others. The flowers seem ready to ripe into fruits. And at first glance, the hue of the flowers reminds you of a pink that looks like the light scattered over the sky with the colours of longer wavelengths when the sun goes down. Then you realize that the hue in the bud is as deep as if the earth is ready to come between the sun and the moon to give its inhabitants the sight of the red moon.
Maybe, that happiness lies in having dal-chawal in one plate with all your cousins while you are visiting your grandparents. When all of you are sitting in a circle on the floor, catching up on each other’s tales of life, you all keep on adding the jokes which makes it even funnier than the last second, and you realize that your grandmother is smiling eye to eye watching you all from across the room laughing and eating. With light in her eyes, she looks so serene that you wish to freeze the time.
Maybe, when you notice your childhood friend who is now in another section of your class with a new haircut, you compliment her in the most tapori words you knew at that age and it cracks her up in sudden laughter. She rolls her eyes upwards thinking to herself whether I am actually looking good or not but she believes you the next instant because it is you, her childhood. Even though you are not close with her anymore, it still makes her whole day. And you feel that joy watching her happy because her smile is just so infectious and because she is your childhood too.
Maybe, it is when you visit a bookstore, and it is so quiet and peaceful that you start to take deep breaths in because you want to store this moment in your memory. You look through various shelves, run your fingers on the cover pages, open them to feel the thickness of pages and suddenly your eyes fall on a book that seems like it will have lots of pictures in it. You brisk towards it to find out that you were correct. You look at the back of it to know its price only to find out that you could fund your six meals with that sum. With this heartbreak, you slowly put that book back on the shelf when you hear the voice of the store owner that it is on sale.
Maybe; not maybe, but surely, sometimes we miss every corner, every turn, every alley to reach as fast as we can to that place on the top. Only to realize later that happiness can also come from that detour, that pause, that little thing.
— Written by Shivani Sharma!