It's all about happiness

Over the last couple of years, I have increasingly come to the realization that the goal of all goals that I have set for myself is "Happiness". This feeling/ emotion/ ”state of being” is the destination. While it is true in life that the fun is usually in the journey and not the destination, it is the destination that matters when it comes to seeking happiness. It is important to realise this, lest one gets lost and focuses only on the journey. The goals that I strive towards on a daily basis, the targets I have set, the things that I have accomplished are all milestones in the journey towards that "ideal state of being". The goals and accomplishments are there to lead me to the mother of all goals - Happiness. Without this destination my journey is futile. 

So, I have spent time defining what happiness means to me and have promised myself to live an intentional life, keeping the mother goal in focus. If I cannot define what I am seeking, how shall I know what I am seeking? So, I have started off with my definition.

My definition of happiness

I would define happiness as “a combination of feelings that I experience and they are:  Joyfulness, a general sense of well-being and optimism about everything, good health, an awareness that I am growing and learning new things which is fuelled by a general curiosity about and interest in a multitude of things, a feeling of serenity and equanimity, of loving and being loved, of gratefulness, abundance, contentment, and an overall sense of security.”

These feelings that make up happiness for me have been evoked by one or more of these activities - watching a beautiful sunset, mountains, a heavy rain, a mountain stream, being out in the nature, a good night's sleep, a good 30 mins meditation, hanging out and conversing with family and close friends, watching certain "uplifting" movies, laughing till my belly hurts, doing charity/giving back to society, empowering others, alleviating someone else's pain/problems, accomplishing something for which I have invested time and effort (such as gaining new knowledge, good health, financial security), seeing my loved ones realize their dreams, reading a good book, hearing "uplifting" stories, good exercise, simple home-made food, able to see beauty in small things - a dew drop, a butterfly, the sound of crickets, a leaf, a flower, children's laughter, a fragrance, a good song, a smile.

I shall come back often and review/re-write/refresh what I have captured above and keep this mother goal right at the centre of everything I do.

Adios 2015 !

Well, this was the year with the fewest  postings ever since I started to blog in 2005. Ha !

I am not going to analyse what made me stay away from writing in spite of the fact that it had been a wonderful year. The long commute to and from work might be one reason, getting busier in both my personal and professional lives might be another. But man, what a wonderful year this was !

My daughter, Ananya was born in August and brought us so much joy. Her beautiful smile lights up even the cloudiest of days. A long three-week vacation to India was relaxing and rejuvenating. My son is growing up fast and learning new things and asking even more questions. We all had a lot of wonderful time together as family. I am thankful for the great times and hoping for more.

Read a bunch of great books this year, left some half way when interest waned while couldn't get enough of some authors. Here are some of the books that gave me good company and plenty of food for thought in 2015:

A wonderful year it has been and I am thankful for all the blessings that came my way. I am also  thankful for all the bitter lessons that taught me something. I have lived another year and thereby stepped a year closer to the final whistle. I am more aware than ever of the fact that life is short and fleeting.  The "book of yesterdays" has added more pages but THIS moment, this inevitable, very moment is all that I have. 

Carpe Diem !!

Currently reading

I am currently reading Joe Studwell's book "How Asia works". With the help of examples of successes and failures in Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia), the book focuses on how rapid economic transformation is achieved. The author gets into the details of three critical interventions that governments can do to speed up economic development. They are :

1) To maximize output from agriculture, which employs the vast majority of people in poor countries,

2) To direct investments and entrepreneurs towards manufacturing, and

3) To intervene in the financial sector to focus on capital intensive, small-scale agriculture and manufacturing development.

Currently reading

I am currently reading Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography, "Playing it my way". Sachin retired from cricket about a year ago and at that time I wrote a post on how closely I had followed his matches and career. The man, whom I respect immensely for his humility and commitment to the game, has been an inspiration to millions of cricket lovers across the globe.

PS : (3rd January, 2014) Finished reading the book. Hats off to the man who went on to achieve greatness in spite of repeated injuries and breakdowns. Here is an excerpt from the book that left me speechless:

"It was on the eve of that West Indies match that I tried to introduce an element of fun into my batting practice. I was practicing some throw-downs from Gary Kirsten and was just about to wrap up the session when the idea came to me.I decided to close my eyes for six deliveries, just after the bowler released the ball, then I asked Gary if he had noticed anything different. Gary said he hadn't, except that my head was staying up when I was driving. I had to keep my head steady, because with your eyes shut you can easily lose the path of the ball with a very slight movement of the head. When I told him I'd had my eyes closed, he was shocked. I explained that I had watched his wrist position when he released the ball to see if it was, say, an outswinger, and then closed my eyes and visualized the path the ball would travel. After that I went a step further by keeping my eyes shut and telling the fielders where I had hit the ball, based on how and where I felt the ball on the bat. It was just for fun and I only did it once, but it did help me focus on the release of the ball, which is so important for a batsman."

That is unbelievable ! That is genius !!

Recently read

I just finished reading Civilian Warriors by Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of Blackwater Inc. Mr. Prince presents the "other side" of the story of the infamous company that according to him was made a scapegoat for doing what it was contractually obliged to do. Blackwater, whose employees served in some of the toughest theaters of war, Afghanistan and Iraq had been the very ugly face war profiteering over the last decade. Critics of the company have always pointed to the military-industrial complex that seeks out wars that throw up huge opportunities for companies including "mercenaries" such as Blackwater to profit from the outsourcing of war activities (training, supply, search and rescue, security, intelligence, and mundane administration etc.) The author presents Blackwater's side of the story, the history of "civilian warriors" in not just famous battles but the exploration and settlement of the new world, the constantly changing and ever evolving nature of warfare, the founding of Blackwater to address particular training needs of security forces, the nature of the contracts that the company had with the State Dept and Department of Defense, the company's track record in never failing to protect anyone under their cover, the explosive growth of the company, the tragedies in Iraq that led to civilian deaths, the incessant attacks from the left and the media, the gradual erosion of public faith and the end of the company as we know it.  Although Blackwater was not the only company in the business of "battle" (there are other famous names such as DynCorp, Executive outcomes, Blue Mountain etc.), it earned the ire of the public, the Iraqi govt, and the democratic regime in Washington for reasons not just confined to their battlefield actions but also from partisan politics that needed a whipping boy. 

Good reads

Read these two books over the last month or so. Excellent ones, strongly recommended.

Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan by M.J. Akbar, one of India's prominent journalists.

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies, by Jared Diamond

In the past, I have enjoyed reading Jared Diamond's other works - "Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel : the fates of human societies".

Hort Park - Singapore

I love the days when I walk back home from work via the Hort Park. Random snaps here have captured the flora on my phone camera, while I soaked in the sun and absorbed the sounds of many different birds, the rustle of the leaves, and the wind in the trees.

A Suitable boy - Vikram Seth

This was the first time I read a book by Vikram Seth. "A suitable boy", set in 1951-1952, is a good read, certainly for someone who is able to understand and appreciate the historical and cultural realities of the early post-independence Indian society. In more than 1400 pages, this novel depicts the happenings in the lives of a few families over a period of one year, while painting a portrait of a newly free India, beset by challenges and attempting to rise to a new dawn.

Conversations with Arjun

Me : Arjun, Did you hear what your teacher told me today ? She said that you are very talkative, that once you open your mouth you never close it.

Arjun:  (with a wide smile) Yes, I know... I just can't stop talking.

Latest read

"Don't sleep, There are snakes", by Daniell Everett is a very interesting book that portrays the life of a missionary linguist among the Piraha tribe of the Amazonian rainforests. Mr. Everett,  a missionary, sponsored by the evangelical churches in the United States to "change the pirahas' hearts", to persuade them to worship the Christian god, and to accept the morality and culture that goes along with that worship, ended up losing his faith in the process and realized the atheist in him. I arrived at this book after listening to a radio documentary on the same topic. 

 

According to Everett, Pirahas showed him that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell. Pirahas seem to value direct experience and observation. Everett observes that "If you want to tell the Pirahas something, they are going to want to know how you came by your knowledge. And especially they will want to know if you have direct evidence for your assertion. He calls it the "Immediacy of Experience" principle. This means that if you haven't experienced something directly, your stories about it are largely irrelevant. This renders Pirahas relatively impermeable to missionaries, who are purveyors of incredible stories of the distant past that no one alive has witnessed. Creation myths are no match for the Pirahas' demand for evidence. According to Everett, there was no sense of sin among the Pirahas, no need to save mankind or themselves. There was acceptance for things the way they are, by and large. Their faith was in themselves and had no fear of death.  He concludes by saying that the Pirahas are an unusually happy and contended people, who are fitter and better adjusted to their environment than any religious person he has ever known.

 

The book also delves deep into his attempt to learn the Piraha language over several decades and gets into details of linguistic research and literature, which can be a little boring to someone not interested in the topic. But he ties it all together by finally focusing on the need to invest time, money and effort in studying languages by invoking the close relationship between language, grammar, culture, and cognition.  He quotes the "Rausing Endangered Language Project's" website  and states that "Today, there are about 6500 languages and half of those are under the threat of extinction within 50 to 100 years. This is a social, cultural, and scientific disaster because languages express the unique knowledge, history, and world view of their communities; and each language is a specially evolved variation of the human capacity for communication."

 

There may not be immediate practical benefits in studying and recording all the endangered languages. But treating languages as repositories of specialized cultural experiences will enable us to realize that they are vital in teaching us different ways of thinking about life and of approaching our day to day life.