Several people that I have come across and interviewed about if they are happy, most complained strongly about everything on the surface of the earth. That includes bad luck, misfortune, mistreatment and discrimination by others (mostly spouses), state and central governments, God, other unseen powers, black magic made by others, bad wishes or bad karma or misdeeds from their previous life, etc. The grievance list is indeed quite interesting yet exhaustive, and at the same time overwhelmingly complex. It seems that we as humans are not ready to accept our responsibility for bad decisions or wrong calculations in life, but everyone else is responsible for that. Only a marginal population based on my survey, indicated that less than 5% of people admitted their faults and failures in life and held themselves responsible for that without blaming others.

Dr. Bratati Barik, Head, Department of English, Vidyasagar College, said “One day, in my class I asked this question to students aged 18/19, how many of you are happy please raise your hands'. None of them had raised their hands! Such young ages and so much unhappiness! They have not yet begun their lives and still acquired so much unhappiness, to my utter dismay!”

According to Dr. Barik, age is not a parameter to happiness; nor is wealth or children or family. Personal satisfaction, proper mindset, personal choice, and right decision -all are not outside the influences of external factors. These get affected by external factors constantly. Those who can wave such factors and keep strong control over themselves can become peaceful to some extent only. We need to remember that happiness is realized only partially and in sudden occasions; and peace, as a calmness of mind and a satisfaction of the soul is still quite rare in human lives.

She further added that a man or a woman gets married late and still finds happiness and peace of mind even at a late age. Whereas younger couples fight and suffer a lot in the in-laws' house and get separated. Very often love marriages have been seen to dwindle into nothingness. Age is not a factor in a successful marriage. Young couples also give birth to handicapped babies. An individual can also become handicapped at a later age or pass away unexpectedly leaving their family and children alone in this vast world to struggle and survive alone. Life is an unexpected journey of uncertainty and one dies not knowing what lies next in front of him or her. Hence, we need to train our minds to be happy and compassionate; and avoid unnecessary stress or anxiety to make it more complicated than it already is.

Dr. Barik said, “….the problem stems partially because half or most of the people don't know how to find peace or happiness……….”Most of them suffer due to the lack of knowledge for leading a proper life. Many of them are misguided in life and spoil their opportunities of pursuing a proper career opportunity. Many are driven by laziness and are carried away by emotions and as a result spoil their future.” Above all, both external and internal factors are quite significant and responsible for causing suffering and stealing other's peace of mind. Many people are betrayed in life and cheated by others and because of that they become unhappy and lose the peace in life. Plenty internal and external factors drive our perspective of comprehending happiness and sadness in our contemporary society and sociology-cultural life.

A renowned neuropsychiatrist (name withheld on request) from Kolkata shared his experience of treating an interesting case of false ego, over-expectation, and transgression into personal space that has been socially turning a family trauma into a very serious situation. One of his patient’s son complained that his mother has been so overwhelmingly attached to him following his father’s death that it is choking him to the extent that he was getting himself transformed into a mental patient with high irritability, mood swings, aggression, and occasional depression episodes.

The doctor advised both mother and son to have mutual respect for one another and to be accommodative. He commented to me that, “…the son being a high achiever in professional life is a solitary individual with a very strong personality. I told my patient that to deal with his son, she has to learn to respect his personal life and interests. If you cross that limit of his personality, he will start negatively confronting back. He is perfectly mentally sound and a loving, responsible son. He does not currently have mental issues; but with your overarching emotional need for attention, you are suffocating him psychologically, making him both irritated and agitated, and vulnerable to mental issues in the not-so-distant future. I advised both to take one step back and look at each other with empathy and mutual respect.” The doctor said following that incident their mother-son bonding has improved over time simply by taking them through counseling and by making some important lifestyle changes. This particular incident is a perfect example for illustrating, how through patience and judicious planning, we could avoid unnecessary negative confrontations with one another, and at the same time improve the quality of our life without showing any disrespect to another person.

The doctor diagnosed that his patient (the mother)has been pushing his son due to her acute emotional insecurity to such an extent that she is repeatedly moving into her son’s personal space treating him as a kindergarten baby and trying to micromanage everything for him; making both antagonistic to one another. The son complained that his mother interferes too much with his very personal as well as professional life making him agitated due to repeated transgressions into his personal space making him extremely angry, violent, and aggressive as a result of irritability caused by the mother. A few years later the doctor said that after treatment and therapy, both mother and son have improved their mutual relationship by learning to accept each other’s personality traits and limitations that come with it or in other words accepting each other as they are. Indeed this is also an important aspect of our life to accept reality and our circumstances to make us happy.

Ms. Chandrima Das, a homemaker from Howrah, West Bengal mentioned, “Yeah! very true. …just tell me what is not going to be in danger! Everything we are facing now is indeed in a highly challenging situation…..social, economic, ecological like climate change is happening and human greed is absolutely responsible for that; hence, blaming God for our crime and suffering is not at all justified.” Thus, it seems we as humans interpret happiness based on our perspectives of the world and our experiences in life. If our journey has been seamless and enjoyable, our definition of happiness is different from those that had an arduous, perilous journey of life with enough ups and downs. Happiness, therefore, is a a piece of transparent glass that has no color of its own. But it takes the color of the light that is reflected upon it. If the color of light is green it turns green, if that’s yellow it turns yellow and if that is red then it switches to red. Happiness is a color of life that has to be colored by the light of our interest by none other than us. 

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