Saturday, January 27, 2007

The Circle of Happiness

Try out this simple test. Draw a circle on a sheet of paper. Within it write down everything that you think makes you happy. Anything at all, small or big – fame, money, car, jewels, gadgets, or even just coffee. If you are not able to fit in everything into the circle you have drawn, draw a bigger circle, and repeat this exercise till you have a circle that fully envelopes all the things that make you happy, joyful. So, how big is your circle of happiness?

Most typically, our circle of happiness is unimaginably large – so large that perhaps, you wouldn’t be able to draw that on a sheet of paper. It is not so hard to deduce that the larger the circle, the more difficult it is to be happy. Therefore, the perfect state of happiness – no circle at all. It is when you don’t need anything to be happy; you are happy because you just choose to be. Perhaps, this is the state that is documented as the “transcendental state” in our religious texts.

So, let me go back to my circle of happiness and help see it shrink by the day - a lot of work to do here.