Happiness...

When I wrote “Travel 180 degrees” itself, I guessed that there will be discussions and follow up articles. I am glad that my guess came true. This one is about “happiness” and alignment between thoughts, speech & deeds. The argument was, can we do and say whatever we feel like just to be in alignment with what we think! Of course not!

My point is about when they are not in alignment it will create stress or you will be considered as dubious.  Which one will you correct if there is conflict between what you think and say? Which one will you change when you say and do are in conflict? What is the point in saying something if you know that you can not or will not or should not be doing that?

Sure, some times we say or do something just to keep peace but we don’t mean it. Once in a while it is fine to do that. But if we have to continue doing it, we know how it feels like after we do that! We feel frustrated or guilty or worried of being caught! Should we really do it? The question is how will you fix this? If our thinking is correct and the environment is restricting the expression then it is better to fix the environment. Many of us choose to keep peace and bottle up even in this case. That is suppression. It would come out in a nasty way. Not only that we develop hatred towards the environment. When we don’t mean what we say, it leads to artificial harmony which in turn leads to all the other bad behaviours in ourselves and others!

Let us look at the other side where we  are saying the right things but our thinking is not correct - obviously it is our thinking that needs to be corrected. Sure it is not easy. It can be painful. But that pain is much smaller compared to the pain of encouraging the thinking while suppressing just the expression. This can also come out in nasty way and the damage it does is even more!

Conflict between what we say and do is a lot easier to fix than the conflict between thinking and doing/saying. It is a matter of just speaking less. The famous movie dialogue from Rajanikanth is the solution- speak only what is doable and do what is "speakable"; in other conditions keeping quiet is the best strategy. If we think carefully, this reduces the criticisms too. It reduces arguments too! Life is peaceful when we only discuss the possibility of doing!

It is about taking on painful or difficult things today to achieve bigger things in future or to prevent bigger pain in future. Though it sounds counter-intuitive, that is the only possibility I feel. Correcting the incorrect thinking or expression is painful in short term but beneficial in long term. With practice, the time we take to correct ourselves comes down; eventually we learn to think in the right way, learn how to fix the environment quickly if needed or move out of the environment quickly if fix is not possible and how to differentiate between the two options. This brings utmost inner peace. There is no happiness if there is no peace inside!!