Have you ever had a laugh so hard that it brings tears to your eyes and cramps up your stomach? I’m sure you have. I bet every mortal on this marvelous wonder of a creation has. Irrespective of the kind of rut you’re currently in, a good laugh never fails to ease your burden a bit, even if it is ephemeral. All of us have often come across the saying “Happiness is contagious”, have we not? But to what extent is this universally translated saying true? Does it work out in all situations?
We’ve had outbreaks of viruses like Ebola, and others like SARS, MERS, Typhoid Fever and a whole bunch of microorganisms being used to kill hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. There are also viruses made by man- Synthetic viruses, we call them. These are deadly diseases, as it has been evidently showcased to the entire world. Yes, they are contagious. Yes, they spread faster than a wildfire. Yes, they do not discriminate between wealth, health, and race or gender as long as they find themselves a living host. To summarize it in a simply, yet blatant manner, we could say “You contract one of these, you’re dead.” But man, being the mad genius that he is, has discovered methods to contain each of these viruses, each and every single one of them, although it is a bit puzzling and beyond my comprehension as to why he would in the first place synthesize deadly viruses. We don’t exactly have a cure, but we do have a containment solution. We can prevent them from spreading, and taking any further toll on the casualties list.
In sharp contrast, Happiness isn’t containable. You just have to give in to it. Even if it means that you’re about to lose a million dollars on a bet that it isn’t contagious, you have to bow down and give in to the fact that Happiness is as a matter of fact, contagious. A happy person makes the people around him happy, and a happy bunch of people are always a delight. Happiness is an emotion that’s hard to find, but once you have found it, there is nothing in the world that can suppress your elation. It doesn’t matter what makes you happy. When you are happy, you feel the inevitable need to make the others around you feel the way you do. Suppose you’re the leader of an organization, and you’re happy for some reason, it reflects in the way you handle situations, interact with your workers and staff on that particular day. Your work force isn’t mad at you, which makes them happy, which makes you happier when you see the productivity charts the next day. When you are happy, you take steps to inspire the people around you to find happiness.
The key to finding happiness is a strong, instinctive feeling that there is an upside to every grievous event. Failures are the stepping stones to success. People haven’t just said that because it sounds cool. Every human on earth knows this to be a fact out of personal experience. It doesn’t mean that you have to keep failing in order to achieve success. It means that when you fail, your brain instantaneously diverts all your attention to where and how you went wrong. This enables you to segregate the positives and negatives from the outcome and apply better algorithms to maximize the positives, the next time around. The quest for happiness works the same way. If something makes you unhappy, don’t stop everything you’re currently doing to focus on the ‘being sad’ part. Focus your energy on the ‘how it could’ve been worse’ part. When you do that, you automatically come to terms with yourself by seeing an upside even in a possibly catastrophic situation.
However, the problem comes when you have conflicting definitions of happiness. For a business tycoon, a turnover with a significant increase compared to the previous year may be happiness. And for a farmer, a good harvest of crops is happiness. What if the turnover of the company and the harvest of the farmer were polar opposites, two sides of a coin, inversely proportional? Conflicting interests can always be drag in the overall quest of happiness. But with current technological trends, there is a more likely possibility of making both parties happy, in this example. Conflicts of interests will always exist. And solutions to these conflicts are born along with the conflicts themselves, but just remain hidden. When the best minds are put towards this conflict resolution, the difference of interests can obviously be bridged, ensuring the happiness of the recipients of the conflict. You may argue that happiness doesn’t solve the problem. True, but it does give you time. The miniscule moments you spend taking your mind off the innumerable sorrows you have been facing, might give you a possible solution to make all of those problems go away, forever. Another major discrepancy with this complex emotion that is happiness is timing. You cannot stand at a funeral and expect to spread happiness. When the timing is right, happiness can be the most useful tool to alleviate your troubles. So, happiness comes along with the Holy trinity of the ‘D’s. The three ‘D’s being Dignity, Decency and Decorum. If you’re able to abide by the three ‘D’s, and at the same time make someone happy, making yourself happy, life goals achieved.
The real problem arises when you are trying to contain your happiness. Imagine yourself being on the Board of Members of a highly prestigious organization and you are currently in attendance of a very important meeting, say regarding budget allocations, but you’re losing your patience and drifting away into the dark corners of classic boredom. You receive a text on your phone, say some forward from a person you know. Say it’s a joke, and it cracks you up on the inside, and the only way to get out of the situation is to laugh. What do you do then? Do you keep it in? Do you resist the temptation? Trust me, you cannot. You simply cannot. I say give in to the emotion. Give in to the emotion that is happiness. Let it take over you. Let it course through your system for the small duration that it might require. Have a laugh. Yes, you will be subjected to a lot of scornful eyes, but I say share the joke with them too! There is like a 50% chance that they may get it too, and be part of your happy journey. I mean, they could be dying of Ebola right now, if there was an outbreak, how much could a good laugh hurt them? But if their loyalties lie with the other 50%, then God help you. Good luck with life, and it’s time you started circulating your CV! But if there’s anything worth betting your life on, it’s the quest of happiness. Even the worst of diseases can be contained, but this emotion cannot. Doesn’t that tell you a lot about the power of happiness?
Give in to happiness. Spread happiness!
Written by Anirudh Rohit C.
