Pursuit of happiness

In the recent few week, I saw the movie "The puruit of happyness" twice. As a movie, it was well made - good screenplan & editing, Will Smith in a good performance and his own son Jaden acting as his movie son did a fantastic job.

But the movie made me to think, going beyond the boundary of the script. As a continuation of my previous blog "happiness is a state of mind", I wanted to explore more of my thoughts.

But before that, did you know - The US Declaration of Independence states the right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. This is the earliest indication of a nation trying to bring in "happiness" into the purview of the state and this was signed in 4th July 1776. Much later in the mid-1900s, Japan and South Korea amended their constitution to bring in the right to pursue happiness and Vietnam added this in their declaration of independence. Bhutan was one of the other countries which started measuring the "happiness index" of its people in similar terms like GDP.

On reading this, I found it a bit of a surprise. To me, happiness is "a state of mind". It depends on the individual and can country guarantee it as a "right". Also, another interesting point that struck me was the nations did not guarantee the "right" to happiness but the "right" to pursue happiness. To me, even the "right" to pursue happiness solely depends on the individual and the state of his/her mind. As in previous blog, while I had a lot of things going great for me, but still I was not in the right frame of mind to pursue happiness, leave alone being happy. Whereas the people whom i met / saw definitely were in better state of mind to pursue happiness and probably be happy.

Thinking further, if happiness is a state of mind, what makes it easy for some people to be happy or pursue happiness while for others it is a difficult task and for some it is impossible? Is it something to do with what you have and what you do not? I doubt it. If that is the case, then I would have been better off during my bus commute when I saw the two young people (refer to my previous blog). Sometimes, it is simple. If you like what you do, you will feel happy. I have observed that whenever i am travelling to the temples, my mind is very light and i am very happy despite the discomfort of irregular food or sometimes painful journey. But what happens when things are not so simple. That is when the trouble start and the pursuit of happiness becomes difficult.

So, can we the task of being happy easier? Of course yes and our own scriptures show us the path to be happy. (to be concluded...)