I guess one can extrapolate this and suggest that folks in the villages are happier than those in cities. So what is the funda going on here? Does more wealth provide more happiness? Or does the pursuit of money puts one in a frame of mind of 'Accumulate now to enjoy later'; only that the latter always comes later and hence there is no happiness now. Some sort of horribly recursive algorithm ensues resulting in less happiness now and later.
Some recent articles on this topic I have stumbled upon are:
- Time of India Ascent - an article by Dr Debhasis Chatterjee, Prof IIM Lucknow:
- www.life2point0.com
Dr Chatterjee says:
"Reality is an indivisible and integral presence in ‘the here and the now’.
"The richness of life is in the moment. The moment has an information density of a billion bits and bytes of live data. True happiness lies in the very depth of this moment. The moment is always present in our awareness...
"The less the thoughts that take you away from THE MOMENT, the happier you are. The moment has not arrived towards you as a succession of events. The moment is always there in the depth of your awareness. It just awaits your discovery; it simply wants to be born through you!"
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2 comments:
I agree "Really powerful words."
However, let me take a contrarian perspective:
What about a person who hasn't had food in days? He is living in the moment because all he can think of is about his hunger of the moment. But I am sure we can't call him happy, do we?
Right Paresh. A hungry person has things more pressing than to be happy with the moment.
The problem arises only after the hungry person has had stomachful of food. What's next? Do I care about food for tomorrow and go back to whatever (hopefully) meaningful thing I was doing previously? OR do I engage in a pursuit of hoarding food? Many of the sadhus and ascetics we revere now, used to seek alms each day for their meals and NOT worry about the next day's meal. They were more than happy even if hungry, perhaps even enlightened.
BTW, the poll must have covered youth who probably have a problem of plenty than hunger.
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