You Are Not Busy — You're Just Forgetting To Be Happy

I once met an auto driver in Chennai who gave me an accidental life lesson. It was one of those humid days when your shirt becomes part of your soul and the traffic feels like a permanent protest. I was grumbling about being late. He was humming an old MGR song and handed me a boiled peanut. I asked him if he ever felt stressed, dealing with this traffic and heat every day. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and said, "Saar, stress is when you want to be somewhere else. I am already here." I tipped him more than the fare and made a mental note to steal that line for a column someday.

We don't lack education or opportunity or even time, if we are being honest. What we lack is pause. And perspective. The kind our grandmothers seemed to carry without effort. They didn't need meditation apps or mindfulness webinars. Their wisdom came wrapped in pickles, prayers, and pithy proverbs. But we outgrew them. We convinced ourselves that we were now educated and worldly and too modern to listen.

Yet they were right. Our ancestors often reminded us not to let the mind gallop like a horse without reins. And it's true. The mind is a restless beast. It wants the next thing before it has finished chewing on the first. You finish school and you want college. You get into college and you want a job. Not just any job but one with pedigree, perks and prestige. You get the job and you want a promotion before the ink dries on your ID card. You buy a scooter and somehow even a Honda City feels insufficient. Then comes the craving for an SUV.

And after all that, suddenly you want peace. But peace does not come with a voucher code. It cannot be downloaded. It does not arrive at your door.

I am not asking you to renounce ambition or romanticise hardship or run off into the forest and play a violin. All I'm saying is it's perfectly okay to pause and chuckle at the absurdity of your own expectations. Wanting things is human. But expecting them to make you permanently happy is like expecting a dosa to stay crispy in a lunchbox till four in the afternoon.

We've confused contentment with resignation. But contentment is not about giving up. It's about letting go. There is a quiet difference. You are not saying this is all I deserve. You are saying this is enough for now.

An elderly friend once told me he hadn't felt truly happy in 30 years because he operated on what he called a "targeted dissatisfaction model". I asked him what that meant. He said every time he started to feel content, he feared he would lose his edge. He is now 72, has had few surgeries and has recently taken up golf, which he openly admits he hates, but has to do — to be part of his perceived elite group. But at least he is dissatisfied in the open air now. Small victories.

That is the modern ailment. We have outsourced our happiness to things that are external, conditional and ever-expiring. Happiness has become a debit transaction. We keep swiping, hoping we have enough in the emotional account. But what if we just declared ourselves rich? Emotionally rich. Mentally rich. What would that change?

Our ancient texts never said suffer now and be happy later. They spoke of bliss, not as a retirement reward, but as something here and now. The Bhagavad Gita does not say work hard and your reward will be sent in triplicate. It speaks of action without expectation. It speaks of freedom from craving the fruit.

And somewhere along the way, we forgot the role of humour. The biggest sign of emotional wealth is the ability to laugh at yourself. If you can look at your morning struggle with your jeans, your Google search history, your children's tantrums, your team's WhatsApp group and smile — you are doing better than you think.

So maybe the real question isn't how to find happiness. Maybe the question is can I be happy anyway. Can I be happy even when the plan fails. When the rice overcooks. When the Zoom link doesn't work. When the person I love misunderstands me. When my knees make odd sounds every time I bend.

Because that is where joy lives. Not in everything going right. But in you choosing not to go wrong in your head.

And the next time someone asks how you are, try saying, abundantly and ridiculously happy, thanks. Watch their face. Then watch yours.