Relationships

Happiness Unlimited

ChromAzonyx108

Happiness Unlimited



I was at a restaurant one time and there was a family seated at a table next to us. At one end sat a grandmother and her grandson was seated across from her. The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp the knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.


She asked, “Hasn’t watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?”


“Yes,” said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, “never to get married.”



Now that’s a wise kid. It may seem that being alone is terrible but marriage has its problems too. When it comes to relationships, you have to ask yourself: do I want this? Do I want this or is this what society tells me to want? We are pressured to be in relationships; it’s almost as if there’s a blueprint to life: get in a relationship, get married, have kids. We are told: this is the right way to happiness – follow it. But aloneness is another path.



Being alone has two major benefits: freedom and love. First, there is a subtle fear of freedom. Everyone, of course, talks about freedom, but no one has the courage to be really free because when you are really free you are alone. If you have the courage to be alone, only then can you be free. Second, the first step towards happiness is to accept oneself. If you can’t love yourself then you can’t love anyone else. I don’t mean this to be narcissistic. When you are absolutely happy in your aloneness – when you don’t need the other at all, when the other is not a need – then you are capable of love. If the other is your need you can only exploit, manipulate, dominate, but you cannot love.



So, if you’re in a relationship you should ask yourself: is it love or attachment? Here are two key signs that it’s attachment. One: you are dependent on the other person. You cannot love a person upon whom you are dependent in any way. You will hate, because he or she is your dependence. Without him you cannot be happy. So he/she has the key, and the person who has the key to you happiness is your jailer. Two: love never gives you misery, because if you love someone you love his/her happiness. If you are attached to someone you don’t love his/her happiness, you love only your selfishness; you are only concerned with your own egocentric demands.



Whether you’re single or in a relationship, we all want happiness and one way to get it is through non-attachment. This is a common message of yoga and it means: don’t make your life and happiness dependent on anything. Preference is okay, attachment is not okay. Here’s the difference: with attachment you are in misery if the person is not there and if the person is there you are indifferent. Then it is taken for granted. Preference is just the reverse: if the person is not there you are okay and if the person is there you feel happy. If the person is there you don’t take it for granted but if the person is not there, you are okay. You would have preferred that the person was there, but this is not an obsession. So, a person who lives with preference lives life in happiness, you cannot make him miserable. Whereas, a person who lives with attachment cannot be made happy, you can only make him more miserable.



In conclusion, there are single people who want to be in relationships and there are people in relationships who want out. Whichever path you find yourself on be happy, enjoy it, don’t make your happiness dependent on anything. Too often we don’t acknowledge what’s good about our life situations but only focus on what’s wrong. I realized this when I was at a bar one time. A married couple were sitting together.


The wife said to her husband, “Hey! Look at that funny guy who has been drinking a lot.”


The husband asked, “Who is he?”


“Well, five years ago, he was my boyfriend and I denied him for marriage.”


“Oh my God,” said the husband, “he's still celebrating his freedom!”

Happiness Unlimited
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