Pursuit of Happiness

No this is not about a movie with the same name. This entry is about the actual pursuit of Happiness.
Remember your childhood days. I believe everyone cherishes their childhood days. It would be a very rare grown up to find who doesn't speak about there childhood fondly. Or who doesn't reminisce about those days and say "Those were the days..."
Yes.. That is because that part of our life is one in which we remember ourselves to be genuinely happy.
Then again the college life too is remembered by most to be the golden days of their life. And once again we remember how we used to enjoy the college days.
But what happened after that.. We were happy in the college.. So that means something must have happened after that.. Yes, after that we went on to have a job.
After that we forgot how to make friends. After that we forgot how to enjoy life.
A 5Rs. ice cream was looked forward to in the childhood days. Having a party with all the money in pocket was enjoyed in the college days not even thinking what would happen the next day. But what happened now? Now of all the times. When we can have all the ice creams in the world to our heart's content. When we can have parties everyday. But they don't actually make us happy now. Even though we can very well afford them. But we don't have such friends anymore with whom we used to enjoy. Friends have parted ways. We meet them less and less. We talk to them even lesser. The same friend with whom you shared the class and yet you both had to talk in the evening. The same friend with whom you went to lectures, bunked classes, roamed around in the evening and yet still went on chatting in the night hours in college. Now you feel there's nothing to share with them?? Even though they now know nothing about your days now. Ever wondered why??
During all those years we used to be happy because we did what we wanted to do. While doing something we never paused a second to think on how others would feel like or how stupid would we look doing those things. We used to sing aloud in college irrespective of the people around. What happened now. Now we rarely sing to even ourselves. Leave aside singing aloud.
That, i say, was the key to happiness.No, I'm not talking about singing aloud. I'm talking about doing whatever our heart wants. People today have forgotten that true happiness is not through money. The lavish party we couldn't afford in college has led us to believe that money is needed for happiness. That 5 Rs. ice cream for which we had to ask their parents has also led to the same belief. And now we run after money trying to compensate for those waiting periods. But during this process we have forgotten that we had more fun in the small party held in a single hostel room than we have in the lavish parties we throw now. we forget that the 5 Rs. ice cream tasted a lot better and made us much happier than the few hundreds of rupees worth ice cream bowls we can have these days. While pursuing happiness, how and when the tracks changed and instead of happiness we started pursuing money, no one actually knows. We now spend late hours in the office trying to impress the boss and get a promotion so that we can get more money. But to spend these late hours we take away the time we earlier had for ourselves. For our loved ones. For our friends. For our family. Earlier we used to have a lot of ways to spend time. Now we don't even leave ourselves any time to spend. That on the whole is the difference why even after earning a lot of money and affording all the things the world could offer, we are not happy. And that is why we must change our tracks again and start looking for ways to make ourselves happier instead of richer. I have a lot more to write about, mostly about politics, and this makes me think that the next entry would soon follow. Till, then.. Keep smiling and be happy... :D