Happiness, is it so common?

So, are you happy today? Like really living your dream out there?

Hey, I am Ankita, well I am not really into giving speeches Infront of huge audiences, but today I got this chance. So, I thought let’s talk about our lives and how we live them.

When we are children, we are told to study hard and get a good score, why? So that we get into a good college and this goes on till 21 years of our life until we graduate and land on a job!

At least in India, it takes that long.

Then you are focused to excel in your career, you keep on running and running to an unknown path and get success or failure. In this diverse world of opportunities and competition, we lose ourselves.

In this period of lockdown, I realized, we don’t give time to chill out for a second and think about something really good. Something revolutionary and not robotic.

Yeah, it happens because the fast-paced world doesn’t give us a chance to think creatively and act on it.

I used to live in Assam a few years back. Those days might be the best childhood days I ever had. People there lived their life to the fullest, maybe because they all were retired or there was hardly any competition but they were very sweet and humble.

Just imagine the grocery store uncle gifting you chocolates on your birthday as a gesture of love, I was a little girl back then, or getting goodbye gifts from them when you’re leaving that place.

Life there was just so simple and sweet until I was thrown into the metropolitan city “Mumbai” where all I could see people running for their jobs in local trains. Why wouldn’t they? The local train timings are just a few mins away from one another.

I would like to ask you now, what life you would like? The one where you can take a moment and experience it or the one where you keep on running?

Well, all of us tend to choose the second one, yes because it is more money-making but for peace and happiness choose the first. Trust me! When we grow old, that is all that we think of, peace of mind.

That day I was doing an assignment about population growth and quality of life of India. My teacher suggested adding some points about happiness index of India.

I researched; we were so behind at the 144th rank. Damn even Pakistan is happier than us. You must be wondering how do they calculate it?

Well, they take certain statistics from the previous year and GDP, social support, personal freedom, corruption etc. Anyways, we are way behind happy, I know there is a lot of population and all.

But are we really happy with our lives? Did you accomplish what you liked after your Class 12th or even graduation?

Well, that question we all ask ourselves every day. Most of you might choose what your parents want to, my parents were quite supportive of what I believed in, they never thought a writer would come out of a scientist’s family and that too two PhD ones!

Still, sometimes I am clueless with my goals and what makes me happy, what will be my career, I worry too much.

Now, the ranking might drastically differ because of the lockdown. People might be happy about themselves and know what they are doing.

The person who wrote the statistics and helped with the research, John Helliwell says, “The happiest countries are those ‘where people feel a sense of belonging’, where they trust and enjoy each other and their shared institutions. There is also more resilience, because shared trust reduces the burden of hardships, and thereby lessens the inequality of well-being”.

Well, we can’t change the ranking of our country instantly but all we can do is be happy with who we are and what we have. I always got inspired to stay happy at the moment from my mother, no matter what the situation was, she remained positive and calm.

So, today I urge you to take that stress away and be happy for once… not for anybody but yourself. It might sound selfish but self — love and happiness should be your top priority.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.