We, the residents of a tech-savvy world have adopted this dogma that everything in and around the world is characterised by a utopian beauty. This is an age where mobile phones have ceased to be mere gadgets and are treated as appendages integral to our body. This is an age where parents are busy bragging about how their one year olds are able to operate youtube and game launcher. This is an age where the once flaunted I Phone XS becomes a matter of shame because I Phone XS MAX is the new ‘in’ thing in the market. This is an age where people are pretty much ‘into’ their modern-day appendages at the cost of their familial relationships because the attention that the latter deserves is bestowed upon the former. Yet, the same device that severs our ties with our family connects us to unseen, and sometimes unheard of places and people with whom we identify on humanitarian grounds.
20th March is identified as the “International Day of Happiness”. This day was conceptualized to rouse, assemble and advance the global happiness movement. It is therefore the annual celebration of the most sought after virtue or wish of each and every person on this earth, ‘Happiness’ which happens to be a fundamental human right and a common goal for all of the humanity. The theme for this day as far as the last two years are concerned is #TenBillionHappy by 2050, ten billion being the official population of the Earth. So technically, the International Day of Happiness seeks to make every single person around the globe happy and was first introduced by the General Assembly of the United Nations during the year 2012. The original idea though, comes from the mountain abode “the Kingdom of Bhutan” in the Himalayas. Bhutan uses the philosophy of Gross National Happiness by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, wherein the collective happiness of Bhutan’s people is more important than “Gross National Product”.
What made me go back to the origins of this day was what it particularly aimed at. Seemingly, Hapріneѕs Dау wаѕ created to raіѕe awareness globally about the importance of peace, well-being and јоy – something which the present day world mostly craves for! But, happiness is not subject to consumerism as would be feasible for the present day tech-generation who would rather buy happiness out there from the market as they don’t have time to generate it. Even if people try to generate and spread joy through their own idiosyncratic ways, the disrupters of happiness are eagerly waiting to sabotage it through their abominable means. The present-day situation of the world is analogous to a man who is bitten by a snake every time he feels the pain is subsiding. In a similar manner, we are living in a world where we console ourselves by saying that “perhaps this was the last” after every ghastly incident that takes place in any part of the world.
The recent attack on Muslims in New Zealand was yet another blow for the world soon after it managed to emerge from the looming India-Pakistan war jeopardy. Extremely sickening was the abhorrent way in which the terrorist flaunted his crime, shooting the already dead people recurrently. Equally heartrending and poignant were the last words that one of the men in the Christchurch mosque spoke to his killer – “Hello Brother”! Alack! Amid such horrendous events where humanity is being trampled upon, calling a terrorist a mass shooter only because he is a non-muslim or killing in the name of Islamophobia is just but a depiction of one’s mental and moral retrogression.
There is a concept in Upanishads called Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam which means ‘The world is one family’. I believe this phrase captures the core concept of humanity. We all have been created by one God Almighty, bestowing upon us the same physical attributes, blessing us with the same emotional states and giving us all the same primal needs. The divisions that we create within the larger framework of humanity are only but temporal. It is therefore high time that we not only understand but assimilate the essence of this global religion called ‘humanity’. As such, the onus of making the International Day of Happiness a success and thereby making ten billion happy does not only lie on the United Nations or the Bhutanese King, but on each and every member of the family called ‘world’. In these present nauseating times where bombings and attacks abound, there is a dire need for people to converge towards a common goal to rid the air around the globe of the terror that it is right now heavy with. Let us all join hands to make those ten billion happy because no matter how diverse they are in race, religion, culture or ethnicity, the virtue of happiness is alike sought after by all.