In Tambola, 44 is called out as four and four... Forty Four ...These four years in my forties have been key in dispelling a few myths , demystifying basics of life . Life segregates hypothesis from facts. I have been looking back at last four years and thinking on specific revelations which come with forties.
One: There's More to Life than Being Happy
Important to understand, how were your benchmarks set for "Happiness”, very early in life? It was usually people who were well off financially, Had huge houses, had envious looks and were in pink of health and sense of security. Mine were rains , Karha Prashad , Train journeys and of course Ghazals . . With this in Mind, i started my mad chase too, 26 years back . A few years back, I read a quote "It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”. I didn't quite understand it then. My benchmark for happiness was to be a "Giver”, a person with Humility, contentment and Values. Does that really bring Happiness? I realized in my forties, You can either live a "meaningful Life" or a "happy" one. If you ask most people around you, the meaning of happiness, they would allude to stress levels, material spending ability, models of cars and children .Reality is happiness is becoming a "user" and a “taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver." Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided. It may your Dad's property, an education he funded or a business contract your in laws helped you get. I have always found it so tough being a “user” and a “taker”.
How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness is about feeling good. I feel Good in "giving” .People who are "materially happy” tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.
I have made peace with the lack of pursuit of a “happy Life”, I would much rather choose a “meaningful life”. People often ask me, why I am so harsh in “unfriending” people, If I see that people are just chasing material and shallow happiness, I find very little in common with them . This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on their persona as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how. In my case , it is my three children .
It is not that I am right and others are wrong, Meaningful life is my chase. I have a point of view.
ज़िन्दगी… जैसी तमन्ना थी, नहीं … कुछ कम है .... हर घडी होता है एहसास , कहीं कुछ कम है ....
अब जिधर देखिये लगता है इस दुनिया में , कहीं कुछ चीज़ ज़्यादा है , कहीं कुछ कम है ....
Second: Be Realistic, you are among folks who are dime a dozen.
One of hard hitting lesson of forties is reconciliation with a constant sense of realism. When people tell me about holidays, I think of “escape” and “momentary” , I would much rather have 10 hours of un-medicated , non-alcohol induced sleep without fan and airconditioning . Forties, will convince you, true friends or soul mates are a pretty much a figment of imagination. I am, first and foremost, ‘realistic’ about how challenging many things can be. I aint devoid of hope or non-believer in miracles (that would be a folly of its own), but I am conscious of the complexities entailed in any project: for example, raising a child, starting a business, spending an agreeable weekend with the family, changing the nation, falling in love… Knowing that something difficult is being attempted doesn’t rob me of ambitions, but it makes me more steadfast, calmer and less prone to panic about the problems that will invariably come their way. Like I know I will never have a six pack. I have made peace with the yawning gap between how I would ideally want to be and what I actually am like. I have come to terms with the idiocies, flaws, ugliness, limitations and drawbacks. I am not ashamed of my shortcomings and therefore, don’t have to lie or dissemble in front of others. I am just me , Second aspect of realism is "acceptance" too . In our ambitious age, it is common to begin with dreams of being able to pull off an unblemished life, where one can hope to get the major decisions – in love and work – right. But I realized that it is impossible to fashion a spotless life; one will make some extremely large and utterly uncorrectable errors in a number of areas. Perfectionism is a wicked illusion. Regret is unavoidable. But regret lessens the more we see that error is endemic across the species. One can’t look at anyone’s life story without seeing some devastating mistakes etched across it. These errors are not coincidental but structural; they arise because we all lack the information we need to make choices in time-sensitive situations. We are all, where it counts, steering almost blind.
So its ok to say in our forties, I fucked it up.
Third – Become “No One” , Just let me be “Me”
I have often been asked a pretty simple question, who is your inspiration? Who are you a “fan” Of?. I find that question difficult to answer because there is not one personality or person that I find complete, each person is as unique as their finger print. . I am impressed by some traits in some people but that still doesn’t make me . I am Me, born me and will die me. No one has walked my journey, no one has experienced my bliss so how can they pretend to understand . It will be enough in this life time if I understand, just me. We’re not very good at knowing what goes on in our own minds. We know we really like a piece of music. But we struggle to say quite why. Or someone we meet is very annoying, but we can’t pin down what the issue is. Or we lose our temper, but can’t readily tell what we’re so cross about. We lack insight into our own satisfactions and dislikes. That’s why we need to examine our own minds.
Self-Knowledge is a blind spot you discover in forties. It has to control anxiety which is a key motivator and driver in contemporary life .
Anxiety is our core fundamental state for well-founded reasons:
- Because we are intensely vulnerable physical beings, a complicated network of fragile organs all biding their time before eventually letting us down catastrophically at a moment of their own choosing. I am constantly worried about when’s my heart arteries going to clog .
- Because we have insufficient information upon which to make most major life decisions: we are steering more or less blind. Too much of conviction downloaded by Bollywood, peers or an earlier generation.
- - Because we are the descendants of the great worriers of the species, the others having been trampled and torn apart by wild animals, and because we still carry in our bones – into the calm of the suburbs – the terrors of the jungle.
- Because visible objects and locations, German Kitchen and a Patio Balcony, can only symbolize calm to our eyes rather than instill it in our psyches.
- Because the progress of our careers and of our finances play themselves out within the tough-minded, competitive, destructive, random workings of an uncontained capitalist engine without a algorithm. .
- Because we rely for our self-esteem and sense of comfort on the love of people we cannot control and whose needs and hopes will never align seamlessly with our own. As I said above , all acquaintances are not friends and partners are not soul mates …well …in most cases.
I cant afford to be "Battle fatigued" ...I have to Battle on ....I don't wish to die old , sick and in an hospital . I wish to die with my "shoes on" and working , gone one morning....without a mark .
Today’s Ghazal - by Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan , penned by Nazeer Banarsi.
ये इनायतें गज़ब की, ये बला की मेहरबानी, मेरी खैरियत भी पूछी, किसी और की ज़बानी
मेरा ग़म रुला चुका है तुझे बिखरी ज़ुल्फ वाले, ये घटा बता रही है, कि बरस चुका है पानी
तेरा हुस्न सो रहा था, मेरी छेड़ ने जगाया, वो निगाह मैने डाली कि संवर गयी जवानी
मेरी बेज़ुबान आंखों से गिरे हैं चन्द कतरे, वो समझ सके तो आंसू, न समझ सके तो पानी
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