Rashid A Mughal
ONE of the most precious and difficult to achieve goals in life is happiness, particularly in these trying times when moral and ethical values are at the lowest ebb and exacerbated Covid-19 which has created a global environment of gloom and doom. When I refer to moral and ethical values, I refer to relations between close family members and friends. The most cherished bond of togetherness and desire to cultivate and maintain friendship appears to have become a delusion. There was a time in our own life — may be three or four decades back — when everlasting friendships were cultivated and nurtured in school which was the first platform to establish such lifelong relations and association. Those friendships were not based on any “give and take” nor were they for any material reason or purpose other than pure and simple feelings for one another. Such feelings were from heart and endured all difficult and trying circumstances. They were not based on class or being rich or poor. It was purest of the purest relationship.
If we ponder over our life during the past 3-4 decades, we had many reasons to be happy. Our parents provided us all the occasions to be happy. Our friends at school gave us all the time to learn the vagaries of life jointly, provide help and assistance if one had any problem, and above all, gave us the company ,we badly needed in that phase of life. They would spare time to ensure that friend’s problems, if any, are solved and would go extra mile to make a friend happy. All those things are now things of the past. Now friendship largely is for a “purpose” and timely. It is either with the intention of taking material advantage or an axe to grind. People would “be-friend” you if you are in a “high position” or are rich. Once that position is gone, they would not only stop calling you but would not even bother to reply to your calls or messages. Such people do not fall in the category of friends. They are selfish and are with you for a very limited time. They don’t make you happy at the end of the day but take away your happiness.
So what happiness really is ? Short-term happiness is a quick fix. It may be a slice of pizza when you are very hungry, or quick weekend trip to see your best friend or someone you love, a new outfit, a new piece of jewellery etc. It is what you believe will bring you and him instant happiness in the shortest amount of time. Believe me it will work wonders. What really matter are sentiments and if you demonstrate such feelings and sacrifice your time for others, even if you are hard pressed for time, rest assured the amount of happiness you will bring to your friend, will be un-measureable and lasting. Recently I went to see a friend in Lahore for two days(48 hours) whom I had not met for the last 18 months. Deciding to take a trip under Covid pandemic was a real challenge but I took the risk as he is gem of a friend-real close, trusted and admirable and is shortly leaving Pakistan to start a new life in Europe. I realized what true happiness is when I met and sat with him. I think that feeling was mutual and vice-versa. Displaying such actions cement the ties of friendship and it becomes more stronger after every chat. Unfortunately we could not meet before I flew back home due to his other “pressing commitment” but I had to be content with whatever time we spent together. Better than nothing.
If one of our goals in life is to be happy, it’s worth exploring different hypotheses about how to get there. Why is it that happiness is fleeting? How could it be that you feel great in the morning yet that contentedness fades away by the evening? If I would ask you about your happiest time during the last month your mind will probably wander to an event or a period of time where you felt good, experienced great pleasure and were filled with positive emotions. The final view, desire fulfillment, is the extent to which you have gotten what you want — a definition of happiness often used by economists. This view is an objective number (i.e., how much did you get) used to describe something subjective (i.e., what did you want.
Four types of happiness go together — that an individual with one type of happiness probably has all of the others, too. A research study suggests that the answer is not so simple. Imagine a social worker who finds her job to be quite meaningful and wants nothing more from life than to help people. Yet she is confronted on a daily basis with injustice and despair — situations that rarely make her feel cheerful. This social worker might not report much hedonic happiness, but could experience a great deal of the other types of happiness. She may feel that she is satisfied with her life, that she has succeeded in living out her deepest-held values of helping others, and that she has achieved her aspirations. Indeed, ongoing research is finding that these types of happiness only overlap about 50 percent. That is, if you know how high someone is on one type of happiness, you only have 50 percent of the information needed to know how high they are on any of the other three types of happiness.
Which of the four definitions of happiness do people prefer? They agreed most with the life satisfaction view of happiness and agreed least with the desire fulfillment view of happiness. It turns out that people are inclined to believe that it is more important that they are happy with the way their life story has unfolded as a whole than whether they have all their wishes satisfied. It is not easy to make one feel happy these days for a variety of reasons. It is equally not easy to make everyone happy. Time has become a precious commodity and people avoid spending it, generally, with others. True, our present day life style has made us extremely busy but here is where you judge a true and sincere friend who you think is closest to you. You won’t find him lacking should a need arise for his company. Those are your “all weather” friends and you are very lucky if you have one.
— The writer is former DG (Emigration) and consultant ILO, IOM.
