If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…
I love this children’s song. It is a beautiful song. It also makes me think, every time, that it is possible to be happy and NOT know it. As a matter of fact, it is usually the case. We are happy most of the times and we don’t know it and hence fail to clap. Normally we realize that we were indeed happy when the happiness goes away for some reason. So while the happiness is there, it is taken for granted more often than not.
For example, when I started on my long journey of struggle with physical pain 7 years ago, I was in deep anguish. As I was going from doctor to doctor and healer to healer, I went to a Reiki master and I complained about my back which was hurting so bad that I couldn’t breathe a sane breath. She said something to me that was so profound and yet so simple that it stayed with me ever since. She said:
“You are cursing your back now but did you ever stop to think and be grateful that all these 29 years you lived, your back served you so beautifully? It supported you, carried you, catered to every demand you made of it and didn’t even let you feel it existed. Were you happy and thankful then?”
No, I wasn’t. I was too busy going about routine business of life and I never stopped to ‘live’.
Today I am also aware that there is another kind of happiness, that is the real happiness, that does not depend of external stimuli. It comes from within where there is an eternal source of joy and bliss. Here I am not talking of that happiness. I am talking about ordinary day-to-day happiness that does depend on external factors. There is so much abundance of that too. I have the opinion that if a person decides to go on living, no matter how miserable he thinks he is, his happiness quotient is more than the sadness quotient, whether he knows it or not.
Now knowing it has its own benefits (that’s where the clapping part comes). When we know it, we feel better. And secure and taken care of. That’s when we attract more of it.
Being happy and not knowing is like sitting on a treasure and dying of hunger. How stupid is that!
Today when I am done with that pain episode (seemed to have learnt what it had to teach me), every time, and I mean EVERY time, I sit, especially on the floor, I am so thankful to my back and the whole universe supporting it that I can’t describe in words.
We don’t have to go through hardships to know we had so much happiness to start with, you know. There are easier ways.
अ
Today, no matter what, I am happy and I know it and I do clap my hands!
Dinakshi
Latest posts by Dinakshi (see all)
- ਇਮਤਿਹਾਨ - January 22, 2019
- बहुत बे-आबरू पर बहुत ही शादमाँ हो कर तिरे कूचे से हम निकले - January 9, 2019
- Home Everywhere - April 9, 2018
