If you are reading this Blog the chances are that you are one of the happiest people in the world. Do you feel it? No? Let me prove it.
Chances are you have no problem of Food, Shelter, clothing and healthcare. You are either living in a developed country or at least in upper echelons of a developing country. You have access to all amenities to keep you physically comfortable. Se whichever way you see - you are probably in top 10% of 'luck index' in the world. Lets say Luck index is a mix of money / health / freedom / mostly happy relations and other things you find important in life. Look at what you earn and calculate where you stand in Human race out of 7 Billion, take your relations and compare to the world, do the same with whatever you think is important, even small things like taking vacations. How many vacations you take and where you go and compare to the world. How much freedom you have in your life and compare. Just keep in mind when we say world it is not your surrounding of under 10 miles, instead it is Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe and others. So you are very successful in life. Now you can argue money and quality of life has nothing to do with 'Happiness' well then I will counter it by - then it still means you have everything to be happy. At least you can't take success as an excuse to be not happy. Also why would you spend so awful lot of time and energy maintaining your lifestyle if that is not for giving you happiness or some kind of satisfaction? congrats you are one of the happiest person in the world! But why don't you feel it? In fact some of you would be shocked to know that you are being described as 'Happy'. Some of you may not be willing to accept you are happy because then the hobby of being sad, the sport of self pity which you cherish so much will slip out of your grasp. Once listening to a discourse of 'Gita' it was argued that Gita and all other philosophical great books were only for people who don't have these day to day survival problems because the platform for them to be happy is made all they need is a twist in the way they think and pure bliss is theirs.
So why don't you feel it? I guess the entire blog is somehow geared towards this question. So I will only focus on a couple of reasons. One - you have never defined happiness for you. Two - You simply don't realize you are happy. There are other reasons like extremely myopic view, thinking happiness is a sign of weakness, prioritization calls etc but let's keep that for some other chapter and let's focus on the first 2 things. So all your life you have chosen to run this race of success, went to school, studied and geared yourself towards making money and looked to marry the right person etc... But you never stopped and thought why am I running the race. Probably you didn't have time for it. But now you have. Stop and think, now you are among the top 10% successful humans in the world. The 90% will take your place in a heartbeat if offered. So obviously in your equation happiness has to figure somewhere. So as far as worldly attributes and physical life is concerned there is no excuse but to admit that you are all set. So if you are still worried (even slightly) about financial and other worldly problems then probably it is due to either fearing of losing what you have, or you are aiming more. At least these worries are not going to go away if you start breaking your way into the top 1% nothing is going to change. At this point either you have started believing that you are one of the happiest people or you need to spend your energy somewhere else instead of this world race (that you have already won). Second thing we can do is remind ourselves everyday that how happy and lucky we are, when you worry about going to work or some work problem you realize this is your champagne problem 90% don't have that problem because they don't have a job like yours. When you worry about your kid's eating habits it's actually a sign of happiness. If your worry is how to make the kid feed more that means you have enough to feed and their is really nothing wrong except you are so happy that all your worry involves pampering your kid. Actually this is how happiness looks like. But you never realized it. Do a simple experiment, when in next few days or a weeks whenever you use words like - I am busy just stop and say I am happy. Because that's what has happened whenever you are happy you somehow call it by some other name. Oh I am so busy, basically means I am happy, because whatever you are busy with is really not a must do, but you have elected to do because you want to do. Similarly when you talk about your studies it's all happy talk (compare rest of the world's problems). All your Kid anxieties is basically happiness as you are fulfilling your hobby of making your kids successful. If you don't feel happy it is because you have no respect for the entire human race's condition and your relative situation and you don't ever make yourself realize it.
My point is - You are having a blast just realize it so that you can enjoy your life more before it is too late. Also think about it - things you have always done in present you have done them with stress and pressure, but later when these events are history you realize that it was one of the best times of your life. Then why not have a blast now and enjoy it now too. For example - you were in college at that time exams and pressures of studies were over bearing (though it was happy pressures, compare them to the world's kids how easy you had it) now you recall all that with so much happiness. When you raise your kids you are all stressed about every detail but when they fly out of your nest, these stressful days are remembered as the happiest days! Don't live in past happy days only, they are also in the present, you just have to realize it.
