Pursuit of happiness

How do you measure happiness? What does it take for you to be happy? We all want to be happy, don’t we? But why is it that most of us are actually not happy at all, mostly frustrated or discontent in some way or the other? These questions have made me wonder for a long time. I have some analysis and some answers.

First question that you need to be asking yourself is, what is it that makes you happy? You may have different answers, like achieving some feat, winning a competition, being loved by someone, getting respect from others, being appreciated by others, getting a surprise, etc. Generally put, you like getting something good, whether it was what you wanted to get or something unexpected. Now to turn this question the other way – what is it that makes you unhappy? And the general answer, I think, would be to not get what you want. We all have wish-lists, or even ad-hoc desires, we also tend to build a lot of expectations from others and those others not having fulfilled the expectations they build also cause a lot of unhappiness.

What I think could be a fun experiment, is to try and bring in two paradigm shifts. One is to change the measure of our happiness, and second is to make a pain/hardship-list corresponding to the wish list.

As I have already discussed, the measure of happiness is usually with the subject being at the receiving end of something good. I see this as a very uncertain and illogical measure of happiness. Let’s face the reality; the only thing under anyone’s control is that person himself/herself. Everything outside of the self is independent and beyond control. Then why peg the measure of happiness on such conditions that are beyond control? I believe, being happy is just as much in self-control as being not lazy is. How about pegging happiness based on your own actions than that of others? How about measuring happiness in terms of giving rather than receiving? For me, happiness is making others happy. I wouldn’t say that I am happy because I got a prize (for example), but I’ll say that I am happy that I could make others happy by getting a prize. Why do you think dogs are loved so much? They’d make you happy, even if you don’t make them happy. And even if one were to think of a quid pro quo, I’d say happiness is initiating the bargain, to give first, even while being unsure of the possibility of getting back.

The same paradigm shift goes well for all the other measures of happiness. One of the biggest problem plaguing the Indian society is that people expect others to respect them without respecting others first. There is always a one-way respect channel that exists in the society based on hierarchies. People generally expect respect because they link it to status than to actions. Which is why we have the crimes against women (most of the rapes in central India happen to vindicate the loss of honor of men), the fucked up families living in hollow happiness, leaders of the country who polarize the population, and a quasi-state of nature; hypersensitive people taking offence at the drop of a hat, and a regressive society that would never move on and keep pace with the current time.

 It is as simple as commanding respect instead of expecting respect. If I don’t respect someone, then I don’t command respect towards that person but at the same time I shouldn’t expect any respect from that person. At the same time, if I am enraged and hurt that someone doesn’t respect me, then maybe I should introspect whether I have deserved respect by way of my actions or not. After all, what can I do other than to control my own actions?

Therefore, one simple change is to just peg your happiness to your own actions than to the actions of others. Any sort of love, respect, or care that is demanded, extorted or snatched can never give true happiness. For me at least, what gives true happiness and consequently, true sorrow, are my own actions; what I give to the world and to myself, not what the world gives to me. This way, I can manage to minimize my expectations, and yet be desirous of what I want, not from others, but from myself.

This leads me to the second thing, which can give unhappiness even if you think about happiness as giving – that is to not be able to achieve what you want. In fact, with the changed first paradigm, it would read as ‘to not be able to do all that it takes to get what you want’. This is a major source of unhappiness at times, because very often I would want myself to do a lot of things for my own happiness as well as others’ happiness, but end up quitting mid-way, or be unprepared to go through the journey. One of the worst situations I have been is to want to achieve, to be somebody, without deserving to be so. Here, I source the second paradigm shift to an article I had read on the internet.

We all want almost the same set of things, like money, a happy family, success in career, etc. But what we don’t realize is the substantive equality argument that exists in nature. To achieve the same thing, different people have to go through different levels of hardships. Although the law seeks to bring everyone on the same starting line, that is utopia. Caste based discrimination aside; every human being is different in the appetite for pain, determination, and priorities in life. What it takes to get to a certain place is what the focus ideally should be rather than the destination. When you go out to bat, if you keep saying that you want to score a century without the will to take on the bowlers of the opposing side, the nature of the pitch, a hostile crowd, sledging from the other team, and your own weaknesses, then you will end up being perpetually disappointed and under-confident.  Therefore, this paradigm shift requires me to make a pain/hardship-list, so that I positively say that I want to go through times of tension, uncertainty, take some hits, take a lot of shit, test my hope and determination against mighty cynicism, go through all my weaknesses to overcome them. After all, we don’t just get things in life, we need to deserve them, and for that, we need to go through a lot of bumpy rides. The question is, how much would you rather enjoy the experiences of a challenge than to sit at home, curled up, in the comfort of your safety and disappointments. Simply put, this is just the practical application of ‘hope for the best, prepare for the worst’.

With this I end this thought which had been really long due in my head. Yet another post with the hope to make the readers happy in a sustainable manner, and relieve the world of some hopeless losers.

Time

It’s funny how Newton’s laws of motion apply so aptly in real life. Just to put them in perspective, the first law is that of inertia, that is, the tendency to maintain status quo and resist any force that changes the state of rest to motion, or vice-a-versa. The second law is that the force required to change the state of motion or rest, that is, to cross the threshold of inertia, is directly proportional to the mass. The third law is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Before I begin with the analogy, it would only help the context if I define what I mean by life.The definition of life according to me is a journey in time and space. The state of motion or rest in a person’s life is the state of his/her being, that is, the state of mind and the daily routine, the progress in life or the lack of it. Now comes the application of the above principles to real life. We all have inertia; we prefer a particular state of being once we are comfortable in it. We don’t want it to change, and resist any kind of disturbance to such a state of being. Be it any type of living arrangement, any job, any stage of life (like growing up is a painful experience, when you realize the steady rate of exchange of freedoms with responsibilities), or any life style, once we are comfortable in it, we just don’t want it to go. This, according to me, is the application of the first law, that of inertia.

The second law is a little hard to understand. We won’t normally understand its application until we realize the force that constantly operates on us and affects our inertia. That force is time, in an all-encompassing sense, referring to destiny, physical time, and the ups and downs. In my opinion, time is a bigger force than any human being, or any country. Whenever there is a clash with time, time will always win. However, when there is no clash, it only means that we face consequences of our own actions. [Even a half volley or a full toss or a long hop needs to be put away to the boundary, otherwise, it is as good as a Yorker or an unplayable perfect bouncer!] And therefore, according to the second law (F=m*a), time is always a constant force to change our inertia of rest or motion.

The third law applies most interestingly. We tend towards making things still, towards establishing a routine, to familiarize ourselves with the time while it keeps moving us. However, when time leaves us still, we are even more troubled by it, to be in a rut. This way, we both like as well as dislike certainty, and consequently, both dislike as well as like uncertainty. Thus, our affinity towards certainty does follow the third law, that is, when time gives us uncertainty, we seek certainty and calm, and when time gives us certainty, and keeps us still, we seek to bring our life in motion, towards uncertainty – a perfectly equal and opposite reaction.

When it comes to our approach towards time, I see two possible extreme states of mind. One extreme is where everything needs to be so perfectly prepared as if a person jumps ahead in time to see and live everything before he/she actually lives the present. There is a lot of insecurity and paranoia, and a strong aversion to any unexpected situation in this approach. The other extreme is to jump in unaware wherever life takes you. This approach requires a taste for adventure, very low desires, capacity to sustain beatings, and a great deal of improvisation.

Of course, we can’t even stop doing everything and be at the mercy of time, because this constant overpowering force of time is also not predictable, certain, or constant. It keeps changing its magnitude and direction. If you persistently try for whatever you want, maybe when time favours it, you’ll get it. That is when we need real conviction, belief, and patience, to not give up or doubt ourselves when time doesn't favour us.Thus, there are two lessons to be learnt from the uncertainty of time –a) there is no point being on either of the two extremes mentioned above, and b) that only a balance between the two extremes (that is, to keep trying to control our life and yet have low desires, and a great deal of improvisation) can help us deal with our tormentor, time.

One thing that time is constant and certain about, is the reduction it causes to our lives, with each day, each hour, each second of time that we spend, we lose it only to never get it back. As long as we value it in our thoughts and actions, and not waste it on reading stupid blog posts like this, we are not losing out on life. By the way, the fact of existence and life of a person and the constant struggle for survival is itself an equal and opposite reaction to the ultimate goal of time. It is always up to a person to end his/her life, yet we labour on with it,with all the baggage of emotions and responsibilities as if life is some uncontrollable trip that cant be stopped. Since we choose to not end it, much rather enjoy it than regret it.

Step up, son!

The word 'rigor mortis' has kept haunting me ever since my JC interview. Hardly ever in life have I faced a situation where in a crucial position, I have been totally blank. I had never heard of this before, and it took me a while to even get what it sounds like, especially coming from an interviewing Supreme Court judge. I didn't know back then at the time of the interview, that not having heard about a term like this would hurt me like a bitch later to find out that I didn't end up getting a clerkship. But then again, I thought, if there are people judging others not on the basis of whatever they've done till now in life, not counting in the possibility that a person may 'know' things later in life as long as the person can go one up against the same judge on pure logic, but deciding someone's career based on him knowing/not knowing what 'rigor mortis' means, what's the point of working with such judges! Thus, I reconciled myself, in the comfort of my illusionary ego and the company of those other fellow human beings, including a senior advocate, who wouldn't know what rigor mortis means, or whether a criminal court can appoint a receiver or not, but only till I met a certain college senior, who was like, "What?! How can you not know what rigor mortis means?". And it wasn't sarcasm. An honest expression of surprise at the lack of my worth in not knowing what 'rigor mortis' means! And this happened with more seniors whom I know and cared to tell my story to. It made me realize, that it's all too easy to rubbish something or someone off and pretend to be in an illusion of supremacy, but there shouldn't be any excuses for any sort of failure. Agreed that bad performances happen in interviews, and a person cannot possibly know everything that exists. But, one can at least prevent himself/herself from shutting out possibilities of growth by being honest, and without ego. Oh my god! I think I just had a humbling experience!

Still remain a non-clerk though, watching others, one from every college, go past, only wishing if I had a bad CLAT score 5 years back, and was in any other college, where I could have cried foul about the 'NLU bias', and gotten a preference over others like the present me in this. I need another humbling experience soon. Opportunity cost is slowly setting its teeth on my rotting yet tender sweet cake of happiness, I can't let it have the cake and eat it too. Who can save me right now? Oh wait, I see parents, girlfriend, family, extending a life-saving jacket to me, diving in the freezing ocean herself to swim up to me to give it, going through more pain than me. I have to swim somehow to stop that, I need to get to the boat myself, I need to swim. How do I learn, I am all alone. I either learn it myself, or wait to see people I care about suffer in order to comfort me. I need my passion to keep me alive. What is it? I see a lush green field, a rectangular turf pitch, I see myself facing fast ruthless, killer bouncers from Curtley Ambrose in Perth, and I know what I need to do. I just need to make sure I don't get out. I can't think of hitting sixes when the ball is new and I am facing chin music. I know I need to just concentrate, play my best game, and just hang on there, be on the pitch, batting. I can only score if I am patient and diligent, when I pace my innings. I want to hit a 300 on the first day itself, but I need to know that I am batting on WACA, facing the scariest of bowlers, not on a flat track facing Sreesanth with an old ball. A boundary hit right now will be as good as a 50 otherwise, and even if it takes 50 balls to open my account, by the time the day finishes, I'd be close to a 100, with eyes so well set that they see a football, and feet gliding around, hitting the old ball coming on the bat well. In the end, the greatest of innings are all played in challenging conditions, not on flat tracks.

If given a choice, 99% batsmen would want to bat on flat tracks without any grass, typically in the sub-continent. But then, globally, hardly any player has received as much respect and adoration as Rahul Dravid, because I am sure, he'll choose the grassiest, and bounciest, and fastest of tracks, or even a 5th day pitch in India playing spin. There is always a choice, but would you hit sixes like Chris Gayle at Chinnaswamy against Mitchell Marsh's timid bowling and get bored in a couple of matches, or rather face the chin music at Perth just to enjoy the process of survival and then come on top of it. I guess, the courts are enchanting me again. I don't care about the money right now at least. I'm just too hungry to slog at work, can't wait to get an appearance, can't wait to argue before those same judges, can't wait to feel the pressure and nervousness, can't wait to manage in very limited means, can't wait to save up, use up, solve problems, make others happy, and be an advocate!

Don't judge!

The title refers to one really lame-ass attempt made by one of my friends to crack one of my-type jokes, on me [for the really lameness thirsty curious lot of you, the joke was a question, 'what can I never tell my dad']

Anyway, this post marks a rather unplanned return for me into blogging after a gazillion ideas to write a post which could never materialize due to various reasons which all can be grouped under the simple head 'mea culpa'.

I asked one of my friends what she would love to become, keeping aside all considerations but the kind of work, and she said, "I'd love to be a judge". My reply was simple, "tell me something that you already are not". Tis' true. We all are judges, not judges of law, but judges of each other. For a long time I used to hate the fact that people judge, and I really used to judge those who judge others! I had somehow judged the activity of judging as inherently negative, something anti-liberal, that'll make people conscious. Well, that was how I judged the activity of judging and the extremely judgmental people. Going by the number of times I have used the word 'judge', it is no rocket science for me to conclude that judging is inevitable. It is a part of 'human nature', something that people cannot stop, they can only mould it in a certain way; just like food and dieting.

However, judging others, and even oneself, is still considered a bad thing. I remember reading some cheesy lines on the internet on some totally unconnected instagrammed or photoshopped picture, which I used to find true and deep at some point of time. One of them said "don't judge others when you don't know the battles they are fighting". I read this and immediately thought 'how true'. But then, come to think of it, everyone's fighting some battle or the other in life, and if some dude ends up being an asshole, or some girl decides to be just crazy, their battles are definitely not an excuse for troubling others, specially when others can fight their battles without being a pain.

Similarly, I read some article on some never-heard-of-before-foreign-website, which tried bringing out the fact that how horrible a thing it is to judge yourself. While I agree that opportunity cost is the single most disturbing thing that can take over people's happiness and sanity, I also believe that not-judging oneself for the fear of being taken over by your opportunity costs can often end up in you being in a fool's paradise. So, it is clear that judging oneself and others is not only natural and inevitable, but also quite necessary. Why, then should it still be considered bad, and have those side effects of making judgmental people be judged as judgmental, and make people feel bad about being judged?

I feel the answer lies in the huge baggage of judgments coupled with sweeping generalizations that these judgments carry. "He's so irresponsible!", "Oh! He's worse that pigeon shit." "Oh! you are so untrustworthy" "Oh! She is such a rich bitch!", etc. All these tend to indicate an entire person with one characteristic so as to indicate others how to be with him/her. But at the same time, they all are judgments, not evaluations. Now I said above, that the act of judging is inevitable and necessary, but not the act of passing judgments. There is a huge difference. When you judge someone, you analyse, you evaluate, so what you should have at the end of it is a result, maybe something similar to a balance sheet, where you look at a person's attributes objectively. A judgment is a decision made on such an evaluation. That is a highly subjective thing. So, what blots this wonderful, intellectually superior activity of judging in humans as a bad thing is its confusion with the act of passing a judgment. Here's a cliche that I would not mock at "judge the acts, not the person". Now this, is very true. You may pass a decision on a particular act, like, "You shaved off the dog's hair to match his owner's haircut. That is a very inconsiderate act. However, you are not inconsiderate. You are just a person who..." (well, let me come to the bit about analysing persons!)

Having clarified the difference, I will now propose my tried and tested tools of judging a person, which can be passed off as 'objective', and will in 99.99% cases not affect the person being judged in a way passing a judgment would, and at the same time, will enable the person judging to get the relevant info about the person. (I would have written a long long long never ending post about how amazing this 'technique' of mine is without telling what it is and then at the end, tell you to buy it by selling your kidneys, but I preferred to go the Telebrands way). This is about identifying where a person is in certain scales. These scales are about certain attributes that tell about a person more than their acts. In all these scales, there are two extremes (obviously), and my assumption is that the sum total of the attribute on both the extremes is constant at all the points on the scale.

The first scale is between talks and actions. The amount a person can talk and act is constant. So if he/she talks about doing things more, chances of doing the same are a little less. Similarly, if someone stays quiet about things, he/she'll (actually only he) will be up to doing more things that you'd know. The middle point on the scale will be the equilibrium between the two. Similarly, the second scale is about attitude/outlooks: positive/optimistic and negative/pessimist. Although these depend a lot on the specific state of mind, everyone has a natural tendency to respond to things in a particular way - sporty or complaining; happy or sad; angry or chill; repenting the opportunity costs or looking forward. A person at the equilibrium, would be aware of both the ends and be balanced. Autonomy/Dependence form the third attribute. The extreme end of autonomy would imply someone who only listens to himself and everything else falls on a deaf ear, while dependence extreme would render a person thoroughly confused and scared when alone, and they'd do whatever others tell them to do, without much problem. The fourth attribute is rigidity and flexibility/adjustability. This one's self explanatory I believe. And the last one is the scale of Justice in the Jesus sense. 'Do unto others what you would want/expect others to do unto you'. How much does a person believe in this, is the sixth scale.

The above, I feel, are parts of a person's nature, which can place them on different scales in different points to give an evaluation about them. The primary purpose of such an evaluation, I believe, is to know how to exist peacefully with others. Just like you can't expect a blind person to walk to you in a path strange to him/her without any assistance, you can't expect any person who is naturally inclined towards pessimism to take a defeat being sporty. We often tend to not consider these evaluations while branding others as 'crazy' or 'psycho'. It's as wrong and insensitive as judging a person who is on a wheelchair as a bad or undesirable person because he/she needs a wheelchair to move. Maybe, undesirable to some as a personal choice, but it still remains an objective fact. That is what I have tried to sum up above.

And just to make it cool, let me throw in a hash tag here #just-another-attempt-to-harmonize-people