All World
Gayatri Pariwar

Right from early ages, human beings have desired happiness and joy in life. Their entire life is spent in search of happiness and all his endeavors are only oriented towards this. Happiness is the intrinsic desire of every living being. Not only human beings, but also animals, birds, insects and plants seek happiness. In their forms of existence also they experience happiness; for example – every living being feels happy and satiated when it eats food and dislikes being hungry.

Actually, happiness has no relation with any object or substance; it is the form of emotions that manifest in mind. Happiness can manifest under any circumstance, and can arise irrespective of the presence or absence of any other being or object. And when happiness arises, it cannot remain unexpressed. Entire being resonates when one is joyous and happy. Happiness gets expressed through eyes and facial expressions, and through voice that gets filled with cheer. In the expression of joy, often even the teeth, that normally lay sternly hidden behind lips, liberally begin to display their beauty. Waves of happiness begin to express externally through such cheerfulness that a person’s mind begins to reverberate and dance. Many a time people actually start dancing in happiness.

Truly it is almost impossible to hide happiness and we search for others’ company to celebrate it. When we are unhappy, we search for solitude, tell others to leave us alone, and do not like anyone near us. We express our sorrows in loneliness by crying, grieving and talking to ourselves. But when we are truly happy, we cannot stop ourselves from meeting others and voicing and sharing our happiness with them. We celebrate and try to include everyone in our happiness. The people who are the closest to us, we include them first. Our mind breaks into songs in happy times, and overwhelmed in joy, it provokes us to celebrate by dancing. This is the reason why during festivals and other joyous occasions people dance to drum beats and music. This is done to spread cheer as far and wide as possible. In Rigveda also in the description of creation of the universe, all the deities are described as breaking into dance to celebrate the occasion.

Happiness is very contagious as well; whoever comes in contact with a happy person also receives a gift of happiness and feels elated. Happy societies are full of vitality and creativity, and reverberate with new thoughts and new ideas. However, nowadays several distortions are percolating in the ways happiness is being celebrated in society. For example, people are dancing to loud, fast paced, disco music played by DJs, getting intoxicated, firing guns in air and so on. How appropriate and apt are these ways of celebration, is a question that needs to be seriously deliberated upon. It is important to think about this because, like a contagious disease, this culture is spreading its tentacles in our society and many people are employing such unruly methods, blindly copying others.

Loud, fast music is indeed exciting and fun to hear, but proximity to loud speakers adversely affects hearing capacity. At such occasions our voice does not reach others’ ears. Neither can we hear others nor can others hear us. Our ears enter into a state of stupor and so cannot feel happy! definitely does not make our neighborhood and our society happy. Personally an individual may feel happy and his ego may get satisfied but it disturbs others and brings discomfort to animals and birds as well.

Happiness is an occasion to express ourselves, spread joy to others and infect others also with our happiness. For this reason, at joyous occasions celebrations are held, sweets are distributed, parties are organized, dances are staged and various art forms are displayed. In a way, happiness provides us with comfort, contentment and fulfilment. In happiness, people do not ask for anything, they get inclined to give. Even if they have nothing else, they distribute cheer to others faces and by speaking bring cheer to others hearts. They are so overjoyed that they go over to others, spread their happiness, hug them, take blessings from elders and greet others with affection.

The lifestyle we have started living these days is full of artificiality. It lacks simplicity and is unnatural. This is why simple, pure happiness is getting lost now. Artificiality of life has given people mental disorders which is why they are mostly unhappy, hurt and disturbed. So in expressing personal happiness also they do not care about others and in some form or the other give pain and suffering to others.

But the means adopted these days to express joy and spread happiness to a larger community by playing loud music and dancing intoxicated, We must think and understand that in the name of expressing our happiness and spreading cheer, are we making others happy or stupefying them? Are we increasing their happiness or actually furthering sorrows? If we really want others also to be happy with us, our means of expression must be such that they do not disturb or harm the nature and environment.