Page 18 - Seniors Today - July 2021 Issue
P. 18
Essay
Rediscovering
Happiness
The pandemic has taught us about a hidden benefit – the simple ways of
incorporating joy into our daily life, writes Harsh Goenka
“Don’t Worry, Be Happy…” is that popular lives, by our obsession with work, money
1980s song by Bobby McFerrin. Whenever and all the goals we were chasing, that
I would hear those lines my reaction would we didn’t have the bandwidth to notice
often be - “Easier said than done!” Yet anything.
today, through these gruelling 18 months The pandemic struck. And life as we
of Covid disasters and hardship, I realise I had always known it and enjoyed came
have actually rediscovered happiness. to a crushing halt. Many of the things
Just a few evenings ago my heart lifted at we had built into our flurry of daily
the sight of a beautiful rainbow appearing activities – movies, socialising, dining out,
on the horizon. A brilliant shaft of light became out of bounds. It was unnatural
and colour surrounded by dark ominous compared to our usual routines, and
clouds, and I found myself thinking frankly quite unnerving. Initially I was
this was nature smiling despite the quite overwhelmed by the enormity of
encircling gloom. Nature is forever giving what the entire planet was facing and the
us messages of hope and joy. “Painting repercussions it could have, with a million
for us, day after day, pictures of infinite ‘what-if’s marching through my mind. And
beauty,” says John Ruskin. But we were then, almost imperceptibly, my goal posts
so consumed by the mad rush of our busy shifted.
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