I have always been a firm believer that the way to live life is to seek out moments of celebration and to make them count. This moment, with two of my friends possibly sharing the most happiest/important moment of their lives so far; clearly counted as one. As I sat in the audience and looked at the abundance of happiness all around, I realized something. I am always very cheerful around weddings(or the like)…

I believe this goes back to something someone once told me when they were trying to explain the concept of selfless work, the person chose the example of a wedding. What he said was that when people are involved in organizing a wedding it doesn’t matter what job or menial task has been given, all that matters is that the task is done so that the event is a success.

One of my best experiences with the internal workings of weddings was when my sister got married. It was then that I truly understood what that meant. Ever since every major family event that I am a part of, I take a moment to stand back and appreciate the effort that it takes to make a huge event.

Its amazing how many little tasks need to be done to make an event of those proportions happen. And its always awesome to watch so many ppl make it happen.

So, finally congrats to my friends on their engagement and congrats to all involved in making it happen

William Shakespeare famously once wrote “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players“… Shakespeare in his time must have also wondered about his purpose of life and during one of his epiphanies must have believed that he was closer to his purpose than ever.

But what if there is no purpose? What if life is what we truly make of it… Then what is the drive for existence? I believe the real drive for existence is the “pursuit of happiness”

When we look at life and look at the thousands of decisions we have made over our lifetime, what becomes clear is that each and every one of those decisions were made with the expectation that, that particular moment would lead to happiness.

Its easy to look at obvious decisions like going to a movie, visiting a place, meeting up with friends, but even painful choices like lying to someone or breaking a insignificant law had in its core an expectation that things would become in some way better for you. It is this pursuit that we make unconsciously, that shapes the life we have and happiness we eventually get…

What is truly amazing is that we hardly ever discuss happiness or look at ways to seek it in its purest form. Most of our lives are spent trying to indirectly find happiness. The thought that I shall do X task and it will lead to Y situation which will make me happy is so deeply embedded in our minds that we hardly ever wonder what it is to be happy.

It was during a reunion with a few of my ex-colleagues a couple of days ago that I realized that happiness involves being truly comfortable in the moment. As I sat and talked the evening away with my old friends I realized that I was very happy with myself and the moment. Despite knowing at the same moment that my team whom i closely followed had fared badly (an event that would almost always have me sporting a frown). I wondered out loud and asked a friend why it wasn’t that sad or disappointing that our team lost that evening. He simply said, “I am just happy I am here, other than that nothing else matters”.

Thats when I realized it, each one of us in this quest of happiness have become wary of what it is that will disappoint us. We try our best to avoid it but along the way we decide to gamble our happiness for an event. We hope that at the end of the event we will become a happier person and decided to throw in our valuable attention as the wager.

Each and every moment of our lives we are gambling our worries and peace of mind, all for that moment of ecstasy that we hope will last forever.

Today I stood in the middle of a field and watched the sunset… my work needed me to be present at the place at that point of time and as I watched the orange ball of fire slowly descend into the horizon, the dark rain bearing clouds moved in to take its place. The temperature dropped suddenly by a few degrees and soon there was a cool breeze blowing, I stood silently and tried my best to experience the moment that surrounded me. In that moment I was truly happy…

There is a school of philosophy that believes that “you get hurt only by the ones you truly love”. In a sense this is the very same concept of investing an expectation and being let down. One approach of happiness would be to give up investing… then you wont be let down by anyone or anything… but that would mean you should never love again.

But there is an alternative way, I have realized that we must choose to always look at the big picture. Search for things that will make you happy no matter what, maybe its reading or writing, maybe its walking in the evenings or talking to someone that inspires you, maybe its listening to your favorite music or running in the morning, maybe its dancing in the privacy of your room or talking to a baby… What ever it is figure out what it is that exhilarates you. Make that list as long and as diverse as possible… Then just make sure that you search of opportunities to do the things on that list.

Its really that simple, life will give you so many opportunities to do the things that truly make you happy. And when you get an opportunity grab it… don’t think twice…

What I have realized from life is that each and every one of us is somehow, for good or worse hardwired to seek happiness in the traditional way. We are always looking at investing our thoughts and attention at something/someone in the hope that it will make us happy, but the fact is there is already so much beauty in the world and yourself to find happiness. Considering every single decision we made was weighed on the scale of happiness, why walk away from a small treasure of happiness?

Some choose to sprint away and ignore the situation till the situation disappears into the background. Some choose to face it and fight their way out. Some find their own unique solution… Whatever we choose deep down we hope that we never have to be in that situation ever again.

Then one fine day you notice someone else going thru the exact predicament you went thru. You see the way they are handling it and it reminds you of what you did. All of sudden you see flaws in what you did and what you should have done. You wonder if you had stepped back for a moment and looked again could it have worked out better.

And then you realize the important thing is not how you handled it or how it should have been handled but rather it is the lesson that the situation carried along with it. Sometimes its subtle and sometimes more pronounced but in the end there is always a lesson.

During my 25 years I have had a few moments of my life that were connected with the fragility of life and death. Each one of those moments taught and inspired me to rethink and reevaluate my life.

Life:

The earliest memory for me of anyone being born was that of my cousin sister. This was close to 16 years ago… She is the youngest of my cousins from my mom’s side and I still remember vague images of the hospital as we waited for the baby. Among the cousins on my mom’s side(will talk about my relatives in another post) my sister was the eldest and me the second eldest. My other younger cousins were with us and I remember all of us getting excited about the baby and even christening her with her first nickname. We still refer to her with that name

The next memory is that of my cousin giving birth. This was a cousin from my Dad’s side, from that side of the family I am one of youngest… We happened to be at the hospital at the right moment and I watched as they carried the baby out of the delivery room. I was still young and did not truly appreciate the magic of child birth… I remember simply standing over the baby and looking at him… This was about 10 years ago…

My best memory in this regard was one in which I didnt see the baby in person for almost 3 months after he was born. When one of my closest friends in engineering told me that she was expecting I was estatic. This was till then the closest person I knew who was going to have a baby. The only bummer was that she was in another continent… I remember calling her up to congratulate her and few times later to talk about the baby with her. It was one of the most exciting things I had ever been around. I finally saw the baby when she came down to her hometown(also my hometown) for the naming ceremony.

I remember sitting across the table and asking her questions about pregnancy and child birth. I was never more excited about the stages and events. I even asked her if it was spiritual in any way.

To be entirely honest, the biggest regret of being born a man for me is that I wont be able to give birth to a baby. Lot of ppl(mostly my female friends) think that I should be happy for that coz I am spared the pain and suffering of child birth. But honestly I cant fathom doing anything in my life that can be as beautiful and important as giving birth to someone… I sometimes look back at life and wonder if I have or will ever justify receiving the gift of life… something tells me that once you give birth to someone, you will have an answer to the question…

Death:

In the movie “Before Sunrise“, Ethan Hawke’s character Jesse says : ” This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath… all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn’t get it out of his head. And I think that’s so true, I mean, all – everything is so finite. But don’t you think that that’s what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?”

I have always believed that life and death are just phases of a grand scheme of things. I have always believed in rebirth and the Hindu philosophy of the cycles of life and death… So in many ways I dont feel as sad as most people do when I hear about death. Dont get me wrong the sadness is there, the pain of a good human being not there anymore is there too but deep down I just know that this is how things are meant to be.

There have been three deaths that have had very profound impact on me. The first two were my grandfathers… both had lived a full and fruitful life. In many ways I dont remember being in extreme depression on those days. I was much younger of course to understand what was all happening around me.

The death of my first grandfather(Dad’s side) happened when I was much younger. My memories are limited to visiting my village and laying my grandfather to rest. I have a distinct memory of waiting for the crows to come and eat the food placed in an open field(a hindu custom). My dad rarely mentions him, but my mom always spoke highly of my grandfather, that always left a hole in me wishing I could have known him better.

The death of my second grandfather(Mom’s side) happened only a few years ago. I was never very close to my grandfather and interacted with him very rarely. His image in my mind was of a strict man whom we saw from time to time. As I grew older the interactions were even more sparingly, he hardly visited us and though my dad met him very often I hardly ever saw him. When ever the opportunity came I was too busy playing with my cousins.

My grandfather was an amazing man. I heard stories about him from my mom and grandmom, stories about how hard he worked to come from extreme poverty to richness. About how he did little things keep my mom and her siblings happy. About how they went to watch movies together and how he interacted with my dad and other people.

It was all that which changed the way I looked at death… I remember seeing him after his death and I realized that we are all losers in front of death. Here was a man who had achieved almost everything he set out to do and yet only a few were remembered about him and sadly not all were very flattering.

I stood by and watched him being buried and wondered if this was the right kindof goodbye he deserved. I wasnt old enough to have say in the things that were happening around me but the whole experience left me saddened.

The next experience with death was the most profound of all my experiences. I have already written about it in detail in this blog entry I made about 4 years ago -> In My Hands…

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A lot of my philosophies about life are based on the above incidents. If I look back now and think about each of those incidents and my thoughts at that time, there was no way for me to know then that I was going to be changed by them…

In the early morning of last sunday, I stepped out of my house before the sun had risen. I walked up to my bike, started it and simply drove away…

I have always wanted to do a long drive on my bike and despite having owned my bike for over an year I had only traveled in the city. I love driving in sections of the city where there were smooth roads clear of traffic, enjoying the wind and the speed. But I always missed doing that bike trip.

In the week before my birthday I was determined to go on a long drive. I discussed with my friends and we decided to go on the drive on Saturday, but unfortunately I had to work on Sat and missed it. On sunday all I was thinking about was driving…

As I rode away from the city, I realized that I was traveling exactly the opposite direction of the sunrise, the kaleidoscope that is a beautiful sunrise unfolded in my rear view mirrors. I drove for three hours, the longest time and distance I have ever done on my bike.

Halfway thru I realized that this was for me a bit like meditation, my mind was clear, my heart calm and body relaxed… It was truly an holy experience…

Now I will look forward to a longer and more relaxing drive