If you are lonely in each other’s presence, it’s probably best to separate!

Loneliness is a virtue if you are alone, a learning if you are in a crowd and a curse if you experience it in a relationship – particularly in a marriage!

Someone who read my recent blogpost on Bajirao Mastani (http://avisviswanathan.blogspot.in/2015/12/what-we-can-learn-from-kashibai-about.html) shared her perspective: “I don’t think Kashibai deserves to be deified for her choice of separating from Bajirao. Perhaps, she was uninteresting and very traditional, housewife-ish? Perhaps Bajirao found Mastani very refreshing, vibrant, oozing mohabbat from every pore…perhaps the trappings of being a Peshwa and being bound to tradition – wife, kingdom, mother, army – shackled Bajirao and he just wanted to break free? And Mastani’s offer to be his companion gave him that exit route?”

Hmmm….! In the absence of the real Bajirao, the real Kashibai and the real Mastani, you can’t entirely disagree with this reader’s point of view. Besides, if that is what drove Bajirao go with Mastani, nothing wrong with it at all. It is definitely a better choice than being lonely in a marriage – which, interestingly, leaves your spouse lonely too! In the movie The Lunchbox (Ritesh Batra, 2013), Lillete Dubey, who plays Illa’s (Nimrat Kaur) mother, poignantly alludes to how lonely – and dreary and traumatic – her Life has been until her husband’s passing away. In fact, she confesses, not in a grief-stricken state of stupor, but in a moment of absolute clarity, that all she really wants to do, to perhaps celebrate her new freedom, is to eat parathas! The reference to parathas is purely figurative. It could be anything that you love doing - anything except feeling lonely in a relationship, anything except suffering alone, anything except being shackled!

A marriage is nothing but an arrangement, equivalent of a business contract. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out, the arrangement must be dissolved. There’s nothing to grieve about, feel sorry for or berate when a marriage fails. A marriage fails because the two people in it have stopped looking forward to each other. They can’t relate to each other anymore. They are lonely in each other’s presence. How much more banal and painful can it get? When you put up with loneliness of this kind in a relationship the entire responsibility of your suffering is yours. Remember: you have a choice. And that choice is to opt out.

I am not trying to suggest that all of us must break away from our marriages. All I am saying is that if you are unhappy, lonely and suffering in a marriage – or any relationship – exercise your choice to break free. The brutal truth is none of us has too much time left here. This Life has to be lived – each moment is to be celebrated and you must be happy every step of the way! When something or someone pins you down and makes you lonely, sad or unhappy, either get it or them out of the way or you get out of the way yourself! Simple!!

To be happy, stop wanting and start being

There is no price to be paid for happiness. Yet it is the most prized and priceless possession!

I met a young man just now who said he had chosen to lead the marketing function for an institution that groomed next gen leaders, instead of joining a tech start-up, because the marketing role was closer to his idea of “happiness”. I salute the young man. How many people really care to follow their bliss, or choose to do what gives them joy? Most people’s choices are driven by the earning potential these choices offer than by the opportunity to be happy doing what they end up doing!

You cannot be happy by working harder, being more successful or by having more wealth. You can be happy only by being yourself. Your natural state is happiness. And if you are unhappy, it is in going back to that native state is where you will find happiness again. Within you. That state can be found by stopping to think who we think we are. You are not your degree, you are not your position, you are not your apartment or car or bank balance. You are you. Just you.

I met someone, a noted movie actor, sometime ago who was saying he was upset with the way certain sections of the industry were treating him. He was well past his prime but felt he must still be treated like a star. And he was suffering because of the way some young turks in the industry were ignoring him. His suffering came from his idea of himself. Not from his real Self. His real Self was pristine, past its professional prime, but beautiful, remarkable and talented. But his idea of himself as a star was hurting him. That was the cause of his unhappiness.

There is no blame game in this. All of us have a skewed idea of who we are. Because we are often asked this question – ‘what do you do?” So, we end up thinking that we need to have a calling card, a vocation, a social perch, a money-making crutch to answer a question that really means ‘who are you’ but is disguised as ‘what do you do?’. Now if you answered this question saying I am a doctor, a lawyer, an actor or a teacher, you are fine; you are socially correct and ‘respectable’ therefore. But supposing you said, in response to the ‘what do you do?’ question: ‘I live’ or ‘I enjoy’ or ‘I just be’, you would be seen as a ‘socially (in)different being’. But those answers are the ones that really pertain to you. And if you understand the question, understand the answers to be true, only then will you understand happiness.

Happiness is loving what is. Simple. So, stop wanting and start being. You will be happy. Instantaneously!

Stop “searching” for happiness, simply learn to “be” happy!

To be in pursuit of happiness will actually lead you to despair. But to “be” happy in the now, with “what is”, you only need to make a simple decision: which is to accept whatever you have and learn to love it.

Let's consider what are the common factors that make you unhappy: 1. Not getting what you want. 2. Not finding someone agreeing to your point of view. 3. Having someone work against your interest 4. Losing something or someone you love most 5. Fear, worry, anxiety of the unknown future 6. A memory of a past that you desperately want to relive. Now, look at these six factors once again. Ask yourself: 1. Do I really need what I want? 2. Is it necessary for someone to agree with me on everything for me to live with that person? 3. Is a detractor's scheming design more powerful than my integrity of purpose? 4. Can my yearning for someone or something bring back what I have lost, what is over? 5. Can I not replace Fear with Faith? 6. Can I really go back in time? When you ask yourself these sensible, practical questions, you begin to realize the futility of your search for happiness. You will then simply learn to be happy!

Happiness is not something that you can order. It is not something that you can dictate or demand be delivered to you subject to certain pre-conditions that you set. Happiness is what will dawn on you, that which will drench you, when you accept Life's pre-condition which is to decide not to set any pre-conditions! (If you don’t get it the first time, there’s no harm in re-reading the previous sentence.) Happiness, therefore, is a decision. Haven't you often caught yourself or someone you know searching for their reading glasses all over the place, while it is all along resting on their forehead? That's how absurd or banal our pursuit of happiness really is. It is who you__and I__are. It is in us and we keep searching for it, pining for it? How will we ever find it this way?

When you decide not to look for it and be it, you will find it – in the here and now. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. That decision to want what you are getting from Life, in Life, is the only one you need to make to be happy. So decide. Make an intelligent choice. And live happily ever after.