Happy By Default!

"We are sad, due to a reason, always, but we can be happy without a reason"- one of the many pearls of wisdom Bawa (Khursheed Batliwala) shared with us in the Art of Living session I attended last year. How true it is! You need absolutely no reason to be happy sometimes. You have a beaming smile on your face, a bounce in your step and someone asks you 'Whats the matter? Aaj bade khush lag rahe ho'. You just smile back in response and say 'ainvayi'. Happens so often na? Thats the beauty of life. Happiness is our default state. All other moods are due to some reason or the other. Once that reason is gone we are back to our happy state.

This realization is in itself a reason to be happy, since, the key to happiness is in our own hands. Agreed, you can't do anything about some problems; the solution may not be in our hands. But you can surely try to ignore or forget your problem for some time at least. Ya, I know we are not computers and we can't magically erase problems from our memory. But since we are human we can fool our memory by distracting ourselves. TV, books, painting, gossip..the list of distractions is endless! We just need to direct our energies into something else and when we get back to our problem, trust me, it will seem a lot less difficult.

So just cheer up - its in our nature to be merry!