Is finding happiness the purpose of life?

Purpose of our life should not be finding happiness, rather we should contrive to lead a meaningful life. Meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Happiness is an emotion felt for sometime, it ultimately fades away. Happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past, present and the future. We may or may not be happy about our past.

We should set aside our selfish interests and instead serve/help someone. Now fulfillment of our interests could give us happiness and so can helping/serving others. Now if the sole purpose is being happy, the former option would seem more feasible. Leading a happy life, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life is much more.

Happiness, therefore automatically will be the byproduct of leading a meaningful life.

Whatever happens, happens for the best

"Whatever happens, happens for best"

The blatant stupidity of this statement is so obvious that it would be almost spurious of me to attempt to refute it.

*You are diagnosed with a chronic, painful illness.
*Your business fails and you lose everything.
*Your home is destroyed by fire.
* someome very close to you is slowly dying.
*Your husband loses his job and stays home every day drinking.
*You get into a car accident and kill someone.
*Your child is abducted.
*You are stranded on a deserted island

 Where is the good in all this???

Ridiculous, isn’t it? And yet, ostensibly a lot of muddle-headed people actually do believe in this sort of utter nonsense that there is something called Fate or Destiny that takes care of them, and essentially wishes nothing but eventual good for them.

Bad things can happen and do happen, and most of the time there is no good that comes from them. People who claim that they see the good in everything that happens are delusional.

Views on intolerance in India

Yesterday, after finishing my exam and leaving the examination hall, I inquired from my friends about how did their paper go.The responses I got were:

Friend 1 : Yaar baj gyi. Acha nhi hua ( It didn't go well)

Friend 2 : Kharab hua yaar paper ( It didn't go well)

Friend 3( whose only motive was to pass): Badhiya ho gya yaar (It went well)

I, then asked them how much score do you expect. They replied 80, 60 and 50 % respectively.

Now after hearing the initial responses, one may feel that 3rd friend might score highest but counterintutively that wasn't the case after response of second question was heard.


Intolerance word has been doings rounds in the media of late. Now, why I mentioned the incident above is because it is somewhat related to the extent of intolerance in our country. Someone who is very tolerant may feel that there is very little or no intolerance in the country and someone intolerant may feel the rising menance of intolerance around him. And there are people who are shit concerned about intolerance.

Whereas the truth is that our country is evolving everyday, a place where some stray  incident of violence has occured today may turn peaceful ever after, after reconciliation.

What media is doing is exaggerating and blowing things out of proportion.
Our beliefs are personal, so are our fears.

Rabindranath Tagore spoke of his country as a place where the mind was without fear, where the clear stream of reason had not lost it's way, he was praying for things to change, he was expressing a fear, a hope, a dream and a vision for his country.

Basically, we feel free to criticise our country after being dismayed by scummy infrastructure, plethoric corruption, governance mismanagement ourselves BUT pounce on someone else if he raises these points.

I remember what my friend says to me after I criticise him:- "Kisi ne acha samjha, kisi ne bura samjha, jiski jitni zrurat thi usne unta samjha" ( people term you good or bad in accordance of you fulfilling their needs)

Same is the case with intolerance. We we can do as an individual is to do any anything unless it harms anybody.

And regarding our country's image, I remember a quote by Dita Von Teese:

“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”