Tammy a regular visitor to my blog inevitably with some very encouraging, amusing and /or incisive comments has this very nice post with the same title as this post. I had commented there – “You inspire me to write a list of the simple things in my life that give me great pleasure, and it has to start with my morning cup of freshly brewed tea with grated ginger in it that kick starts my day. Watch out for a blog post so that I don’t bore you stiff here!” And in her grand way, she responded – “you NEVER bore me sean! never. i already look forward to such a post!”
There it starts, such a little thing to say but which gives such great happiness!
Happiness has come to mean to be an outcome of some action. What one hopes for of course is to be in a permanent state of happiness which we all know simply to be impractical. One can therefore hope to get things in one’s life that will give the byproduct, happiness.
Last week was not exactly unhappy for me, but it did get me to muse about missing things I wanted and did not get. I must have hit some hidden button because my brother Arvind who rarely comments on my posts, mailed me that the moral of the story is not to get out of the house!
From the day before yesterday, little bits of happiness have been cropping up all the time! I was contacted by two people who I had not heard from in years wanting to reestablish contact, one person acceding to my request for some help for another friend, two visitors on Sunday and one yesterday. I have been getting mails and facebook messages galore and to add icing on these cakes, my mentee Pravin writes a post praising me to the skies which I do not wish to share here for obvious reasons and other nice things have been happening too!
I dug out an ancient infra-red lamp to give myself a heat treatment for a painful spasm and found that the lamp had finally given up its ghost. I mentioned this to Ranjan and Manjiree yesterday in the evening and this morning when I woke up I found a brand new one sitting atop my dressing table! What a way to start the day!
The other little things that give me a great deal of joy every day are, apart from the first mug of tea, my meditation and yogabhyas session, the morning news papers and the four crossword puzzles that I solve; regular interruptions by Chutki who dislikes being ignored for long; the mid morning coffee that Mangal brews for me as soon as she arrives and the lunch that would follow in a while. Post lunch siesta, afternoon mug of tea and books to keep me company till late in the evening, or instead, a matinee film show and a wind up session at the computer just before going to bed. The banter that I enjoy in the blog world and on facebook, has a special corner in my room for happiness. The greatest happiness of all these daily events are the times that I sleep. Unlike many of my friends who have problems, I sleep soundly and inevitably wake up refreshed.
Other joyful things happen without fail even when I go out and so to Arvind I say that aberrations like my last week come into our lives just to point out that we tend to take little bits of happinesses that we come across regularly for granted whereas we should be conscious of them and be grateful as well. And, I do not go out all that much anyway!
Can you think of all those little bits of happiness that we take for granted?