World Happiness Day 😊

Despite India being one of the top most countries extensively using social media and spreading loads of forward messages and other memes that spread faster than Corona, guess what world happiness report published recently indicate?

In 2021, the report focused on Covid-19 and how each one of us perceived happiness.  

The World Happiness Report 2021 focused on the effects of Covid-19 and how people all over the world have fared. Though many of the respondents expressed their anxiety on the wellness of their loved ones during this pandemic phase it is curious to understand how few other countries have been rated on happiness quotient. Culture also plays a significant role in sustainability on state of mind in such cases. India has been rated very poor on happiness amongst people in the country and that had pushed me to think larger on the context and write this article. 

If Indians were so unhappy as the way it is portrayed it to be, it should have also resulted in significant mortality during these difficult phases. We all know mind has big role to play in the wellbeing quadrant. Alternatively, those tagged as happy countries had more casualties including loss of lives. Agree there are multiple other reasons also adding to happiness!

This can be debated right from manner in which the sample population to statistical modeling that are moving averages. In modern world it is tagged to new science often referred as epigenetics that helps decoding our genes through our choices, whatever they are, sleep, managing stress, exercise, personal relationships, emotions, they change the activity of our genes, and if we have for example, love, compassion, joy, equanimity in our life, then genes that cause self-regulation or homeostasis, what the ordinary person would call healing, raises significantly up thus reducing the inflammatory conditions on genes. This is what we did all our good work to not only keep ourself healthy but also joyful.

How did we do that? Many therapists and happiness coach say that we learned to pause, understand the difficulties of others, though we worked longer hours, we were lesser micromanaged and thereby lesser stress, supported community workers, fed stray animals, and most importantly cooked for ourselves and ate fresh food during these days that contributed to healthier living from falling prey to pandemic. Many in India as an example new mothers spent longer time with their infants, old parents spent times of togetherness with their sons / daughters / daughter in law and most importantly grand children. This metamorphical shift allowed some of our greed to die natural death and learn the art of deselect. We learnt to operate at different frequency!

The true joy is much beyond happiness. While happiness is state of being, joy is often associated with tranquility. The effect is bringing value to our inner wellbeing with humble and noble thoughts and enriching the other lives that almost all of us envisaged in some form or the other in 2020-21. Doesn’t this qualify us to be one of the most joyous set of people with loads of mindfulness that we inherited from our ancient heritage days? The term “Peace of Mind” is oxymoron unless seen with lens that is capable of viewing wholesomeness!