Meaning in happiness

I was reading a book yesterday that had these words on the first page ...

“But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning – the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life – a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.”

I liked the lines. I have always been in search of happiness in my life – things that could make someone else happy were never enough for me. Every happiness I searched for turned out to be fleeting. And one experience of it was enough to convince me of its ephemeral nature. The happiness that I found was also of a nature that never filled the depths of my soul – they could perhaps at most fill in a layer or two on the top to look cosmetically perfect but the yawning pit of unhappiness was there always – just below the seeming perfection.

That being the case, I read everywhere that the key to being happy was to live in the moment. I have written about that on this blog umpteen times. I have learnt to redefine what would make me happy over the years but I have yet to learn how to live in the moment. So when I read these lines, it came to me that I wasn’t searching for happiness since I too have a measure of happiness in my life that would satisfy most people  – I was searching for meaning. Once I found it, the happiness would flow in on its own. What was the reason I was put on earth? Why is it that a humdrum 9 to 5 job never appealed? What kept me from following the traditional path to relative prosperity that I saw all around me here in Bangalore and prior to that, in the Silicon Valley – where everyone I knew was a software engineer or an engineer’s wife – following a blueprint drawn in stone with the dangling carrot of American citizenship as the biggest milestone. I never wanted to be like that. And yet I am not anything specific even now after being on this earth for rather a long time.

The good part is I now think that my inability to live in the moment is part of the journey to seek meaning and not some permanent failing. All the yesterdays come together to make today and give it its existence – what we do today determines our tomorrow. Living in a present that is a bridge between what was and what will be is always a tricky proposition. Not looking forward or backward while staying perfectly still in the moment is an art indeed.

I think most people I know are unhappy on some level. There is a state of relative happiness determined by the absence of major personal or professional problems and a degree of financial stability –I see that around me wherever I look. But I rarely find anyone looking deeper into themselves to find out if this indeed is all there is in life. Are you doing what you know you do best? Or are you settling for something less in order to achieve the safe, stable happiness that poses no danger at all? Do you feel that if you were to leave the world today, you have achieved or were on the road to achieve exactly what you wanted in life? Do your relationships matter so much that you are true to them completely? I must be slightly nuts to ponder so much on the nature and meaning of happiness but then that’s what I do.

So happiness and meaning go hand in hand – just like the yesterdays and tomorrows. One day I might actually discover for myself the true meaning and purpose of my life – no matter what, that day will find me truly happy.