Pursuit of Happiness

 "... happiness is the greatest desire humanity has craved to experience.."

 An ornithologist may spend days, weeks, and months in a  mosquito-infested humid swamp just to capture a glance of an exotic avian. As such, luck plays a major role defined by his or her redeeming personal qualities and environmental viability that invites or prevents the entry from the much sought avian, leading to the momentous happiness or disappointment/depression for the ornithologist. As no man, woman or living beings are the same, the vocation such as ornithologists, for many is highly undesirable. Yet for a few, such professions is a chance in a lifetime, to understand a niche of the world, just waiting to be discovered. Like any experience, one has so imagined or been through, happiness is one that is the most unforgettably subjective.

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Material prosperity or spiritual bliss; the measurable and the abstract, both ultimately influences the most vulnerable part of us; our pursuit of happiness. It has a love-hate relationship with our thoughts, actions, and the end results. The so-called evolved form of the human mind has taken a "U-Turn". The assumed primitive monkey mind has further evolved from our preference from immediate gratification to the long-term future. We sacrifice our time, efforts, and whatnot for the future that may or may not be true. Thereby, our monkey mind, that chattering box urges us: live in the moment, LIVE IN THE MOMENT!

But most of the time we ignore its instinctive and primitive beggings and toil our minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years after money, next career goal, next opportunity- just around the corner waiting for us to grab- next- Next and NEXT. As age catches us, we become tired sooner, in both; body and in mind. We realize what time we do have, is becoming lesser and lesser with each passing moment. But it is still not too late for us to LIVE IN THE MOMENT!

Happiness is to watch your child enjoy her meal despite the pangs of hunger

Happiness is to smell the cooking  from the door as tired you return home

Happiness is those small care and concern, we share with one another

Happiness is giving, receiving, and feeling, unbounded friendship and love

(PC:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/917608492796679857/)

In science, especially in psychology, happiness may just be an automatic "feel good" response when we are rewarded for our effort in relationships or material or spiritual achievement. And in biology, it might be the triggered chemical reaching a particular part of the brain due to such achievement. But as sapiens, all these logical theories and experiments do not or truthfully cannot satisfy our pursuit of happiness. Try as much as you may, all things we do for ourselves or our loved ones are to make us or them, happy, safe, and healthy. That's the reason why these achievements cannot truly make us happy, these complex achievements provide us with a "feel good" but not true happiness as they are tainted with unhealthy expectations from friends, family, colleagues, and society. 

Say, you have completed your education with flying colors, with all the pats on the back, a gold medal, and an ovation from the scholar society. Now you are expected to contribute to society, start a family and be the breadwinner. But the thing is you are looking forward to traveling, seeing the world, having an adventure, and living life to the FULLEST! The question is will you bow down to the expectation from your parents or spouse or society or friends or per se, “suck all the marrow out of life” Would you choose happiness for yourself or "feel good" for others and yourself? 

It is a tough call. There is no exact right or wrong, but the beginning or an end of the "Pursuit of Happiness" As such, its very nature is closely tied with the purpose of our life. What we may need to do is to discover and embrace what we deeply care about from the bottom of our hearts and thereby strive for small wins in the warm embrace of little treasures of memories called happiness. The time we are allotted is limited regardless of how much more or less it implies. And the beauty of happiness is its unique process, a kind of journey where it never is identical and boring! Never will we feel empty inside and even if we are alone, we have ourselves, to live for, to make happy, and to be true.

"Life in her graceful steps, a ballerina lives in the balance, the pursuit of happiness..."