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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The elements of happiness

I want you to do this little exercise:
1. Sit in a secluded/peaceful ambiance
2. Close your eyes
3. Fast forward your life by 10 years
4. And list three elements of happiness you can think of.

I have been asking my friends to do this lately and the answers are same in essence as much as they are varied. (You can skip the first two steps if u want :P And remember to comment first and see the other comments later)

21 comments:

saikat said...

1)my new family - wife and kids, preferably rich wife ;) and naughty kids :D

2)my old frnds - more the merrier

3)being able to create some difference in the world of business

ciao..

Anonymous said...

family, good health, and world peace ;-)

and now i feel intellectually qualified to compete for pageants!

well, the answers are serious though, even if i am far from a peaceful ambiance right now, and didn't bother to close my eyes.

Praveen said...

On my own private island
having lots of fun and enjoying life
not having any regrets

Anonymous said...

1) my work / job with a social organization which lets me work with people in the field (yeaaa for outdoors) and bring a smile to some of their faces

2) the girl i love and who loves me in return

3) the fact that i didn't quit 10 yrs ago

4) i can cook and mix great drinks :D

cdn't help adding a 4th -- it's important too

Munmun said...

I will be old by another 10 years! :((

Aparna Ganguly said...

@munmun
:D Somehow that idea thrills me. I'll be older and hopefully wiser :P Will have traveled to a lot more places. Will be kamao-ing in six figures.(should take less than 10 years) Will have earned a post doc in cooking(not that I'm doing bad in middle school either ;) ) Will have my own BMW (oh yeah!!) Will have a loving (underscore) husband. A couple of kids. Naah .. just one. Maybe a pet dog... and most importantly my parents content and happy and comfortable in their old age :)

Munmun said...

hehe! that's like the perfect life anybody can imagine :) good luck!

Unknown said...

hmm my list.
1. i am so rich that i don't need to work anymore, just travel and enjoy

2. -- blank --
3. -- blank --

well i am a perfectly happy person now and will be same 10 yrs from now too.

Occasional Brilliance said...

family... travelling... writing [:)]

saikat said...

appu u forgot gifting me a merc (not the plastic one) :P

Abhinav said...

Doing something I really love like:
Writing things that people say have not come from a potatohead ; ) instead of insanely driving pages of code : (
Have travelled to places like Venice, Florence, France.
Good friends, books, music.
I know that is cheating but wish karne ke paise nahin lagte :P
What more could one ask for?

Abhinav said...

Actually I usually close my eyes when I have to put together some rhyme for uncreated verse. So I ended up putting this together : )

Of this I'm very sure,
That dreams have wings, oh dear.
So if there is a risk you must take,
Take it...
If There is a gamble you must make,
Make it...
And then tell me
If it brought a glee
To your beautiful face...

Have a nice day ; )

Sam said...

hmmm...
1.be with my girl for good!! ;)
2.quite rich adn succesful.. in woteva field i chose to digress..
3.globe-trotter :)

dat quite sums it up doesn't it??
wot's urs??

Arun Srinivasan said...

I sat back and rather re-winded 5 years back though not 10. These are three elements of happiness which i can think of from the past.

1. Me being Myself.
2. Had people around me who accepted me as such for what i am in spite of all the gud and bad i am.
3. The feel of completeness i had before going to bed that "I lived the day".

About the future 10 years...Bit on the philosophical side...

1. Me still being MYSELF.
2. Having people around me who can accept me for what i am!
3. The state of mind to feel the same happiness if the former 2 are inevitably not going to be same.

On the materialistic side...i have just 1 element...

1. When i woke up on the very first day of that 11th year i wanna see in the Forbes list of world's wealthiest people, my name in the top 3 so that i don't have to go to work... ya not necessarily 1st.. i will be happy and contended even with 3rd place...

Hope that completes the circle!

Sameera Ansari said...

A lovely space you have here and great writing!Keep it up.Happy Diwali :)

Aparna Ganguly said...

@Sameera
I'm so glad you flew by :) Happy Diwali to you too.And yeah, participate in the poll if you want. It's fun to identify some of the key elements of happiness. Just thinking of the possibilities makes me happy :)

Aparna Ganguly said...

@arun
That one well knit answer and the perpetual cycle is so very universal! We want to gain resilience and feel maybe the past was better than the present, while in reality, we might had cribbed to have this present in our past, which looks so desirable. This way we bring misery onto ourselves. And the desire for wanting something different never ends. Reminds me of something I read in Standard II :)
As a rule, man is a fool.
When it is hot, he wants it cool.
When it is cool, he wants it hot-
Always wanting what is not.

intelligent_bacteria said...

1> I'll be the CEO of my own company (be it "Tusnin's Paan ki dukaan")
2> I'll still be waking up in the morning with my wife, but along with chunnu-munnu
3> 10 years down the line I'd be the same naughty kid I used to be 10 years back.

Prasoon said...

1. a peaceful house that I can call home where there is just everything that'd calm me after I return from work.
2. Importantly work will have to be such that never burdens - I need happier evenings, a peaceful sleep and merrier weekends.
3. Last but not the least, I somehow have no intention of staying in crowded India ;-)

Ranjan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ranjan said...

1. m lookin' on a mac wid the-feet-on-the-table. its the room 'f a CTO ;) i still love working.
2. i go down in parking lot. a fast car [lamborginis would be slow by 2017] beeps up. (i am a newbie i have had 1 accident in my only 20 hrs of driving career, god knws wt happens at 500mph)
3. i see basolutely nobody around i can recognise.

10 yrs makes things too vague and obsolete. i dont want to think abt it :| it wasnt good.