Sunday Posts

Many of Jefferson's ideas have a lasting legacy, but perhaps none more so than the pursuit of happiness. That has become the essence of the American dream and the point of middle-class existence worldwide. This, rather than all the men are born equal, have become self-evident.  However, the celebration of the pursuit of happiness obscured complicated questions on how to be happy. We may assume that the answer is straightforward, that happiness comes from the acquisition of more: Bigger houses, cars, clothes, jewellery and the like, along with more and more power over others. But both scientific explanations and our everyday experience point to the opposite. Happiness, we know, comes not from Dopamine, a hormone that gets released when we 'achieve' something, but from Serotonin and Oxytocin, those which get released from making others happy and bonding with them. The kick from buying something bigger only lasts until someone with even bigger something turns up, which...

Do we live to pursue Happiness? Well, before you say that it is self-evident, here is the logic of the question: If happiness is inside us, why would have to live to pursue it? Jeffersonian happiness, it seems to me, is an external object, that one has to get. Even if it was not originally meant to be, it is easy to imagine happiness as an object, therefore. Something outside, something to work for. Something like the bank balance, perhaps: definitely that sounds persuasive! Besides, is there an end to happiness? Can one be happy enough and not pursue any more? Like that feeling of being home, when you wish the moment could last forever! If the pursuit of happiness is a self-evident truth, one must reassess those moments: While happiness is all around, its pursuit may not be self-evident anymore. I used to feel like that, sitting outside our home in Calcutta in the winter mornings! I wanted the moment to last forever and didn't want to go anywhere else. I knew tha...

Whatever Jefferson meant with Pursuit of Happiness, it has become a global mantra. We may like, hate or be indifferent to different aspects of American life and culture, but this essential American Dream now underpins the Chinese Dream, Turkish Dream, African Dream, Indian Dream - dreams everywhere! It has become a governing philosophy, and sometimes at the expense of the other two essential aspects of life Jefferson had in mind. True, happiness means different things to different people. An Indian may see it as a comfortable life alongside his parents, which would perhaps be unbearable for a Brit. A man would define happiness differently from a woman. But, despite all these differences, our society could be defined as one unified in pursuit of happiness. Why did this catch on? When Jefferson was writing, Life would have been the most important goal, given the number of autocrats then ruled the world, followed by Liberty, which was perhaps the point of his writing. Pursuit of Ha...

Finally, an weekend: One with no prior commitments, no pressing housework, no coursework to be turned in on Monday, nothing to prepare for, nowhere to go. I knew this was coming and hence, had a late night yesterday and returned home quite drunk: So, as usual, half of Saturday was over even before I started. But, even with that slight regret, that of missing a gorgeous, blossoming spring day, complete with pure blue sky and chirping birds on the street corner and an unusually light traffic on the road outside my window, I feel happy. That deep happiness, which is only a fine line apart from melancholy, that of being alive at this gorgeous moment, as if I have waited my whole life to be here; but only a whisker apart from missing everyone else, all those who should have been here with me, and of all the imperfections of this steady state and indeed knowing, back of my mind, that this is not the steady state. The only way I can explain happiness is as a momentary feeling that you don...