What are we searching for? This is a question we ask so often today, and this question has been asked for centuries. What is it that human beings look for? We manage to keep ourselves occupied all the time, looking for more and more gratification, collecting things and trying to become–now that’s the catchword here–trying to become ‘what’?
I think, this is not just my thought, since this is also what the scriptures say–this constant search is for happiness. Happiness is what all human beings–irrespective of caste, creed or religion–search for.
We search for happiness all our lives in our own way. We search for what we think are our ideas of happiness. A child has its own idea of happiness–like a toy, ice cream, watching cartoons. As human beings, we have our own ideas of happiness as we grow up, which are replaced by other ideas when we are middle-aged and another set when we retire from an active life.
These ideas can extend to–how much money should I have in my bank account when I retire? How am I going to continue with my life and live with the same standards of living I had so far? Will I be able to live with the same luxury? So on, and so forth.
We can see here that this search for happiness is what goads us on, leads us on to live a life. The question here is whether we finally find it. It has a simple answer. Somebody says ‘Yes, I find it in this.’ and somebody says, ‘Yes, I find it in that.’ But then, if one finds it, why does one go on looking for it, searching for it constantly?
On acquiring an object of our desire, we may feel satisfied for a while, but in the long run, we keep searching, looking for something else, even leading to a point of wanting to grab it.
Comments