What can be the touchstone for happiness? How far is someone like you and me, prepared to go to appropriate that what is necessary? When does that what you and I have, become superfluous? Is satisfaction like the peremptory HIV that keeps changing its configuration according to the medication, or like any tangible entity has a definitive cloying point? Is redundancy just a mirage in the pursuit of happiness, or will there be a point when enough is enough? The maxim, money can’t buy you happiness, is grossly misplaced. After all we are slaves of relativity. What is enough for me may have just begun to stir your attention. Want, therefore, is a relative concept. And want is a function of a)cognizance of one’s predicament and b) aspiration. Aspiration can be defined as the conscious appraisal of one’s predicament and the ability to dream, keeping in mind a certain safety factor. This safety factor may be practicable or it maybe hypothetical, but there is no way to determine the accuracy of the safety factor; this parameter is influenced to a large degree by external events which are known to some of us as probability, and as most of us love to call it, God. God has always been a point of fierce polemic while man has evolved; new theories have sprouted and have been extirpated but the intransigence of both parties in this matter implies that the topic remains widely contested every-day. I will however take a non-committal stand, and will proceed by calling this certain potential factor, probability. What are the odds that a mendicant comes across an unclaimed million dollar cheque or a billionaire’s primary estate is razed to the ground by a random event like a tornado? They are very low, but then that is the essence of probability.
The question therefore remains, how far are we willing to discount the odds of an event taking place because they are low? What is the true measure of rubric to be followed when betting on probability? There is sadly, no definitive answer to that. We can only refer to actuarial tables and infer the boundaries of the absurd and the feasible. But occasionally when the supposed sacrosanct boundaries are violated, we are forced to revise our theories dealing with what is risible and what is not. And more often than not we are left not laughing about the upshot. Therefore if I assume that b) aspiration is partly dependent on a) cognizance, we have want as the function of dreams, reality and its acceptance, a safety factor and the undeniable presence of probability. Let me make things interesting by throwing a new parameter into the mix: ethics. Ethics vary from person to person. If you wear a supposedly risqué outfit to the office, how unethical are you? That will depend on the definition of risqué; a décolleté can be blatantly offensive in some parts of the world while somewhere else it might be modish. I will again refrain from being judgemental but I strongly feel this is something that chauvinists and jingoists need to work on. True, there can be no absolute boundary for ethics, but the elastic limit that we have need not be stretched too far either way; or the whole society will fall apart. (Sadly, this is what is happening now, and I have no rationalisation for that; only shame and anger at the moral turpitude and the ridiculous rationalisation of the same by the moral police of our country. There can never be an explanation of acts of cruelty. I am sure no one, however blatant his or her personal appearance is,deserves such bestial treatment.)
Want is important. Want leads us towards advancement. The desire to improve what we currently possess is the spark to development. The unhappiness that roots from being malcontent with the current state of affairs is the beginning of evolution. To be able to dream, to be able to solve an underlying problem, we must face the privation resulting due to the lack of something. Necessity has always been the mother of invention. Whether necessity slept with ethics or money, is a different question altogether. Inventions serve our want. How far we are willing to bend the rules to meet our own demands, how far we are willing to push our resources and sate our greed to the precipice of no return, is a question of bad parenting; ethics is to be blamed for dumping necessity when she was pregnant. Of course she would end up marrying money, but we know money;money is an infidel bastard. And the irony being I have the luxury of condescending on money, knowing full well I would not have a laptop to begin with to write this piece without money.
In retrospection, when I look at the little children playing in the inclement sun, unaware of their predicament, unaware that they have nothing to eat when they return home, I see hope in man. There is this inviolable conviction in their eyes, balanced by the paucity of expectations from life, simply because they have never come across our definitions of material want. What they have is negligible compared to what we throw away. They survive without the basic amenities of life and they are not a quarter as querulous as we are. The most baffling aspect to them is that they are happy! They are only slaves to physical sensations like pain or hunger. They do not assess the future with every breath they take, like we do; therefore they do not have expectations and do not worry about the possible vicissitudes of life.
But this happiness is temporal. With time they will realise that they have had nothing so far and the physical anguish will be accentuated manifold by the mental agony. The waves of despair will begin to haunt them as well, and in the end, no one can be happy. Happiness is such a romanticised word. You can be resigned to your fate, never happy. And if you deny that, you are almost necessarily looking at the means of ameliorating your extant life. Happiness exists as long as ignorance exists. And be grateful that we are not happy. If we were to be happy, we would have accepted everything probability threw at us;thus precluding the necessity of constantly pushing ourselves.
Meanwhile I will continue to wonder at the little children celebrating mock Durga Pujo outside.And I will hope to help them someday.
The question therefore remains, how far are we willing to discount the odds of an event taking place because they are low? What is the true measure of rubric to be followed when betting on probability? There is sadly, no definitive answer to that. We can only refer to actuarial tables and infer the boundaries of the absurd and the feasible. But occasionally when the supposed sacrosanct boundaries are violated, we are forced to revise our theories dealing with what is risible and what is not. And more often than not we are left not laughing about the upshot. Therefore if I assume that b) aspiration is partly dependent on a) cognizance, we have want as the function of dreams, reality and its acceptance, a safety factor and the undeniable presence of probability. Let me make things interesting by throwing a new parameter into the mix: ethics. Ethics vary from person to person. If you wear a supposedly risqué outfit to the office, how unethical are you? That will depend on the definition of risqué; a décolleté can be blatantly offensive in some parts of the world while somewhere else it might be modish. I will again refrain from being judgemental but I strongly feel this is something that chauvinists and jingoists need to work on. True, there can be no absolute boundary for ethics, but the elastic limit that we have need not be stretched too far either way; or the whole society will fall apart. (Sadly, this is what is happening now, and I have no rationalisation for that; only shame and anger at the moral turpitude and the ridiculous rationalisation of the same by the moral police of our country. There can never be an explanation of acts of cruelty. I am sure no one, however blatant his or her personal appearance is,deserves such bestial treatment.)
Want is important. Want leads us towards advancement. The desire to improve what we currently possess is the spark to development. The unhappiness that roots from being malcontent with the current state of affairs is the beginning of evolution. To be able to dream, to be able to solve an underlying problem, we must face the privation resulting due to the lack of something. Necessity has always been the mother of invention. Whether necessity slept with ethics or money, is a different question altogether. Inventions serve our want. How far we are willing to bend the rules to meet our own demands, how far we are willing to push our resources and sate our greed to the precipice of no return, is a question of bad parenting; ethics is to be blamed for dumping necessity when she was pregnant. Of course she would end up marrying money, but we know money;money is an infidel bastard. And the irony being I have the luxury of condescending on money, knowing full well I would not have a laptop to begin with to write this piece without money.
In retrospection, when I look at the little children playing in the inclement sun, unaware of their predicament, unaware that they have nothing to eat when they return home, I see hope in man. There is this inviolable conviction in their eyes, balanced by the paucity of expectations from life, simply because they have never come across our definitions of material want. What they have is negligible compared to what we throw away. They survive without the basic amenities of life and they are not a quarter as querulous as we are. The most baffling aspect to them is that they are happy! They are only slaves to physical sensations like pain or hunger. They do not assess the future with every breath they take, like we do; therefore they do not have expectations and do not worry about the possible vicissitudes of life.
But this happiness is temporal. With time they will realise that they have had nothing so far and the physical anguish will be accentuated manifold by the mental agony. The waves of despair will begin to haunt them as well, and in the end, no one can be happy. Happiness is such a romanticised word. You can be resigned to your fate, never happy. And if you deny that, you are almost necessarily looking at the means of ameliorating your extant life. Happiness exists as long as ignorance exists. And be grateful that we are not happy. If we were to be happy, we would have accepted everything probability threw at us;thus precluding the necessity of constantly pushing ourselves.
Meanwhile I will continue to wonder at the little children celebrating mock Durga Pujo outside.And I will hope to help them someday.
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