What does "Happiness" Mean to me......

Probably the best time to write about happiness is when you are sad. I have been thinking about writing my thoughts over Happiness from the time i came across this Surprize question of "What does happiness means to you" in Civil Services Ethics paper of 2014. After Going Up n Down swings of happiness n sadness in the past few years, i feel myself better placed to pour out my thoughts on this.

Many philosophers have written many ideas about how to be happy in one's life. I am no philosopher, hence gonna put it in very naive layman's language. 

Happiness can be defined as Material, Physical, Mental, Healthy, Pshycological well being of a human being. But even if we have all these things, still we can be unhappy. To me Happiness is personal. Happiness is an Individual's right. Everyone of us has the right to be Happy. Every human being born is destined to die one day n between this Birth n Death, there lies a phase where we keep going through plethora of emotions ranging from pride to pain to sad to happy. All these emotions define a human lifecycle. But Everyone wants to be happy in their lives. So how do we quantify this happiness? When can we be happy? When can we be sad? What defines our happiness? Let me get into my thoughts on this.

Happiness according to me is of two broad catogories. 

Temporary Instant Spike Happiness which ups ur mood with a sudden thrust. A movie, a coffee with a friend, a surprize birthday party, a cool candle-light dinner etc etc all come under this category. This happiness is temporary in a sense that its impact is instantaneous and u will return to normal as soon as the euphoria around it is over. Yes, you do remember those memories, but on a large scale of life, these are quite dwarf.
Still, these are essential to keep you going in life. Else, your life will become Boring Drama. You Sleep, You Eat, You Work n Again u Sleep and all of a sudden one day, u realize that u r Dead !

The other category of happiness is a Permanent Everlasting Satisfactory happiness. A dream coming true, Getting success after lots of Hard work , Pursuing your passion and excelling in it, Making opportunities count, Doing Something great, Becoming Someone great, Inspiring people etc etc gives you the everlasting satisfactory happiness which no-one can snatch away 4m you. IIT, Cisco n IFS rank are probably the moments of this sort of happiness in my life. No-one can snatch them away 4m me even after my death. This happiness attains one more level when u spread your happiness to others by working for them n serving the needy.

Having spoken about this broad categorization, it is important to know why people are not happy. Why a software engineer alwayz cries foul on his manager? Why a wife feels her hubby is not looking after her properly? Why people do strikes ? Why every other person u meet always has issues which are persistent and never-ending? Why is Everyone, Literally everyone of us crying for One reason or the Other?

The reason i always find for this never-ending pain is the Expectations. At a personal level, no one is happy because of the expectations he has on others. One must learn to be happy with himself. One should concentrate on Self first and later expect from others. As Buddha said, this world is full of sufferings and these sufferings are because of Human Desires. It is impossible to satisfy anyone in your life other than Yourself. You can never make others happy, unless you are happy as an individual at a personal level. And one can achieve this Happiness at personal level Only through DETACHMENT as buddha said. 

Detachment in my opinion doesn't mean denouncing everything in life n living like a saint. Then u are not a human living in a society. Detachment to me means the Art of Ignoring and the Art of Identifying. One should keep expectations lower on every one as Everyone will disapoint you at one point or the other. Never give in Too much to anyone. At the same time, One should learn the art of Ignoring negative people whom you are sure of making you disappointed. Better Keep them AWAY, else they will tie a noose of pain around your neck. And the Art of Identifying is to identify the Most important persons in your life and being with them. Lets not confuse the word..Most important..with Societal tags of Husband, Brother-in-law, Father-in-law, Cousins etc etc... Most important are those with whom Your Soul gets synced with. n Unless one identifies such people and ignore the negative people, and unless one keeps expectations lower even on those Most important people, the Detachment is never Complete. Unless we detach ourselves, we will always be entrapped in this Great chain of Pain and Suffering. Most important thing is to escape this Suffering than expecting Happiness. Then only one can live Peacefully for his short span of life on this globe. 

Wuu...m sounding philosphical to myself only... but a sense of Satisfaction having expressed my long-suppressed thoughts on Happiness....Civils results due in a week... Cheers... :)