A Nose for Happiness

I'm writing this at a cafe in a mall, to the din of a lion dance, performing somewhere nearby. The madness of Chinese New Year is finally coming to an end and I just attended a meeting at the customer's place. Lots of things for me to do in the coming months. I really need to think how to best use my time, and whether I want to take things easy or go for the jugular.

I want to look at this year as a sort of sabbatical for me. A year which I can choose to work on things that help me progress both spiritually and materially. I'm happy with how I've spent the first month of the year. It has been productive and I successfully completed a project while putting a lot of other personal things in order.

This month I will hope to continue the momentum. As I don't get to use a regular office now, I am working a lot from my apartment-cum-library. Happiness is being able to work continuously over lunchtime without being interrupted. One thing I'm very good at is finding tiny little excuses to be happy.

I see a lot of people who will latch on every opportunity to complain or find fault about anything. It could be the food in a restaurant, the service of a waiter, the behavior of a co-worker or the sheer discomfort of the hot weather. I'm annoyingly the opposite. I say 'annoyingly' because this attitude of seeing the positive in things tend to irritate people. I am always trying to make every judgement fair, nuanced and balanced. But in a typical conversation, most people just want to you to listen and agree, not to question their judgement of things.

I'm not fussy about food. My bar for good food is set very low. All food tastes good when one is hungry. So, I only eat when I'm genuinely hungry and I can eat anywhere. Every meal is an opportunity to be happy. So why spoil it over small things?

Happiness come constantly in small doses. When you learn how to sense them when they arrive, you are always in a continuous state of joy. A gluttonous person finds every opportunity to eat; a smoker delays work to have a puff at the stairway. If we can find excuses for all these bad habits, why can't we cultivate the habit of finding excuses to be happy?

Even a breath itself can be a happy one. Every breath is a microdose of happiness. One just needs to develop a sensitivity to it. When one's happiness sense is honed, it is very difficult to feel any other way. You might just discover that you have a good nose for it.