Happiness, Anyone? - Mohan Bhujle ... 2006

Are you looking for happiness? Silly question, of course - we all want to be happy. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" is one of the most celebrated phrases in the U. S. Declaration of Independence and is considered one of our "unalienable rights." How do we then go about asserting this right and maximizing happiness in our lives? If you google "Happiness", you will be inundated with numerous quotes, essays, books, seminars - all aimed at explaining and revealing their trademark recipes for happiness. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff, and recognize the true road to happiness? A few years ago, I came across a simple yet powerful equation for happiness. This unique formula is based on Vedanta, the universal philosophy of self-knowledge:

Happiness = (Number of desires fulfilled) / (Number of desires entertained)

We can, therefore, increase our happiness a) by increasing the numerator, i.e., number of desires fulfilled, or b) by decreasing the denominator – number of desires harbored, or c) by doing both.

Before examining these approaches for their ease and effectiveness, let’s distinguish between ‘need’ and ‘desire’. Need is indispensable to human survival, for example, air, water, food, and shelter. Desire - physical, material, or emotional – is, strictly speaking, non-essential to our survival. Need is natural, desire is man-made. Unfortunately, however, most of us have obfuscated the distinction between need and desire. Desires have certainly become indispensable to us and have turned into our vital ‘needs’.

Let’s now learn what happens when we seek to increase happiness by increasing the numerator – number of desires fulfilled. Satisfying a desire does result in temporary happiness because it calms the agitation caused by the unfulfilled desire. There is a caveat, though. As you gratify one desire, several new desires crop up. No sooner than buying a new dishwasher, you long for a matching microwave. A new swimming pool mandates the appropriate new landscape around it. The result is that the denominator increases exponentially and reduces the quotient - the ultimate happiness.

It’s a catch 22 when you attempt to gain happiness by maximizing the numerator. We can find numerous examples of this from our own lives. I remember as new immigrants, many of us young Indians in New York passionately shared our dreams of returning to India. The only thing that stood between us and mother India was a modest amount of dollar savings. It may be laughable today but I distinctly remember that in 1966, one of my more ambitious friends declared that the day he reached $25,000 in his savings account, he would buy a one-way ticket to India. Today he is worth a few million, still living in the U.S., and still amassing more dollars - now for his ultimate retirement in India. By the time he reached his goal of $25,000, he found that it was not enough to cover all the new desires that had sprung up in the meantime. As another example, having a baby is the fondest dream of most married couples. But once the child arrives, the list of desires goes sky high. We want our child to be bright, hard-working and obedient, go to a prestigious university, secure a high paying job, get a quick promotion, and find a well-matched spouse. Then they should, of course, promptly give us a grandchild – who will be bright, hard-working, go to the best school,...and so it continues. Somehow we’re convinced that happiness will fall into our lap as soon as we satisfy our next desire – be it the next million dollars, or the next luxury car, or whatever else we think we need. It’s an attitude that only leads us onto a treadmill without a stop button. I know many people in their 60s, having achieved a respectable numerator (number of desires fulfilled), are still busy nurturing a heftier denominator (number of desires harbored). They are so preoccupied with indulging their latest desires that they have no time to ask themselves whether they are truly happy. George Bernard Shaw aptly said, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.”

So it seems apparent that the only lasting way to boost up happiness is to reduce the denominator by trimming down our desires. If we get on such a decelerating treadmill of desires, we can well imagine a day when the desires harbored are reduced to zero. What’s the result when a numerator is divided by zero? The answer is INFINITY! Yes, happiness can indeed be incalculable when one minimizes one’s desires. The agitation and the tension of hauling these desires disappear. Once we learn to manage the denominator, our craving to maximize the numerator also drops off. No wonder John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century thinker, said, “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

But is this really practical or doable? How can I limit my desires when all my life I have fostered and satisfied them? To get an honest answer, let’s ask ourselves, ‘Where do I have more control, in fulfilling the desires or in limiting the desires?’ To satisfy any desire, in addition to my own effort, lot of things must fall in place – some of them beyond my control. Eliminating a desire, although easier said than done, is entirely up to me. It makes perfect sense to assume that we have better control over the denominator than the numerator. If you review your life at different stages, it’s clear that whenever you harbored fewer desires, life seemed simpler and happier. Desires, whether fulfilled or not, carry a disproportionate burden for the fleeting pleasure they offer.

A good friend provides a pertinent example from his own life. A few months ago he started a new job that requires him to travel five days a week. Given his new commuting lifestyle, he knows the few things (that fit his small suitcase) that he needs for five days of the week. Then he comes home for the weekend, and still finds that he continues to use just the suitcase contents! Doesn’t that tell us how much paraphernalia we have gathered to just carry along! After retirement, one of my friends went from a five bedroom house into a one bedroom apartment. During the transition, the wife found out how many unnecessary things she had accumulated over the decades. She relished throwing them away because with each throw, she felt that life got simpler and stress-free. There is a Taoist expression about an empty jug, that its emptiness makes it useful. When it is full, there is little one can do with it. In all my trips to India, I have noticed many people, certainly poor by western standards, are oblivious to the fact that they are poor. In fact, many of them are the happiest people I know. If you examine their numerator, you would conclude that they have no particular cause to have any happiness. They are happy because of a very modest denominator!

So far, we’ve been talking about material desires. These conclusions can also be applied to our emotional desires, especially in our day-to-day relationships. In relating to the world around us, we have clear expectations of others. Expectations are nothing but powerful desires masquerading as ‘needs’ with a strong sense of entitlement. A hefty denominator of expectations is not conducive to happiness in relationships. On the contrary, it’s a perfect prescription for ending up with a tiny numerator. Talk to any father who feels his child has not come up to his expectations, or a wife who is irritated by the insensitivity of her husband, or a do-gooder who feels that he is not sufficiently appreciated by others. The way to build successful relationships with family and friends again comes down to managing the denominator – by minimizing the expectations. Once we do that, we are liberated and happiness comes to us without asking for it.

Are we then to conclude that real happiness calls for complete abstinence from desires? Our discussion so far virtually leads us to that conclusion! But does it mean that I have to renounce worldly life and escape into the forest to seek happiness? The answer is a resounding NO. What we have observed here is that a lifestyle with few desires is a better way to get and sustain happiness than a lifestyle of running after desires to acquire possessions and pleasures. A simpler way of life does not necessarily mean giving up our surroundings, our relationships or even our pleasures. We merely exercise our potential to manage desires instead of allowing them to manage us. We begin to reexamine our dependence on the material world and personal relationships for our well-being. As the Bhagvad Geeta tells us, the key to unlock the bounty of everlasting happiness, our true Self, is within us. It is, however, camouflaged by our self-imposed sense of inadequacy and desires. A mind that has no desires is always cheerful because the Self itself is the source of happiness. To be happy, therefore, we need to shift our paradigm and train ourselves to look inward instead of fixating on the world outside. It is not as difficult as it may seem, and I believe the goal is very worthwhile.