Happy. Happy. Happy.

Ironically, the word has become a bane. Clawing through our way in a world of strife with the pungent desire to win, to reach an end goal, Albert Camus and Sartre stand corrected in their passionate objectivity on existentialism. We do continue for the sake of continuing, keeping the Sisyphal rock pushing to reach the mythical "Godot", and so entrenched we are in our tunnel-vision goal, that everything in between falls flat. The in-between becomes pockets of shadows we often overlook not knowing that it is behind those shadows and smoke where the silvery essence of the mirror hides. A mirror gazing into our soul.

The desire to be happy is a universal plea that runs across cultures, races, countries, nations, species, and so on. We need to be happy in order to survive. Survival of the fittest? 

But then where do the other emotions fit in? The myriad of emotions, the vivid shimmers of the septet splashed across the infinite canvas of the blue sky...they cannot all be shades of happiness. In a world where the Creator has placed so many variants of life and ideas, there cannot exist one emotion that guides and abides.

For what is happiness if one doesn't know sadness? What is light without darkness? What is VIBGYOR without white? 

We need to be happy. We deserve to be happy. But our zeal for happiness can only find fruition through the journey of experiencing what it is like without happiness first.

We emerge screaming into this world and then we nestle ourselves in the warm cocoon of our creator.

In our desperate zeal to feel happiness, we turn it into our own personal monster. Suddenly, the simple concept of just being happy becomes a perpetual day and night toiling over assignments and deadlines. We make our pen bleed battles and mayhem not knowing that while this toil to achieve our best is necessary, especially in our current economy, it is also an achievement to have simply breathed and kept ourselves alive one day.

It's okay to be sad sometimes. It's okay to cry in pain and grief. It's okay to feel the acidic drop in our stomach. It's okay to feel the gut-wrenching pain that tears through our chest. It's okay to look at failure in the eye and not feel remorse. It's okay to bleed and feel pain and sob and not put up a brave face. It's okay to accept that sometimes things don't go the way we want to and that sometimes irrespective of what we wish the universe puts us through toils. It is only when we scrape our knees do we truly appreciate the freedom of an unscathed life, a happy life.

When men fall, men rise.

The cloistering fervor of reaching the peak of happiness, of giving something as simple as happiness a standard, is truly in line with the absurdity of this modern world.

Why are we measuring Spring, when it has always been about that soft line between wintry nights and sweltering days, that point of balance between two extremes, the time for respite?

Why have we made Spring a cloistering image when all along it was the respite from the cloistered ness?

Here is a poem on our deep fixation on the aesthetic nature of things and emotions, on the blind and desperate desire to hyper-fixate on the good and the happy so much that we don't allow ourselves to have off days.

Dear Spring, the season of life, hope, and joy,

I sincerely blame you for turning happiness into the cloistering feeling of the extremes you promised to fight.

Villainous, Enigmatic Spring

The sky is a shade lighter today,
Amethyst fading into the
Blush of pink,
Ivory kissed contour,
Spring sprung from oblivion.
To zenith, it stuck its forte.
Dismantled Death? I blame Life.
Green blooms anew,
Nature's slaves slaving hearts,
Music that has no words,
Painting that has no canvas.
A world,
Marred with the strokes of Spring.

.    .    .