On the long drive back home yesterday as Amma and I were in the middle of a heated debate on life itself, I said something I was proud of. “Happiness is a choice.”
The words have been echoing in my mind ever since. Irrespective of the context in which I used it, the idea is, much like everything else, happiness is a choice. Like picking what attire to wear or whom to make my life with, the choice to be happy resides in me.
No. Life is not fair. Not always do we get what we want or even need. There are always going to be events and choices we regret but in spite of all of that, I realize, it is totally a mental thing. I can consciously exercise the decision to be happy. To very deliberately put away the things that bother me and focus my energies on the things that do make me feel good.
Having said that do I think I should have a smile plastered on my face all the time? Not really. These days, I get upset, I fret, I fume but eventually before the day or week is out, I am back to a state where I am in possession of my faculty. Where I can make an informed choice to remove pointless thoughts from my immediate attention and put them on the back burner so I can process them later. I repeat to myself that it is a choice. I can choose to be happy. I can choose to ignore things that bother me. Or accept them as part of life and move on.
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