The key to happiness…

Happiness is the only emotion without an equal or an anti-parallel.

For as long as humans have learnt to communicate, they’ve tried attributing the ‘one without an equal’ label to Love, but I just don’t see it, yet. To me, happiness is everything. Even love isn’t any good without happiness.

There exist a few quotes about happiness, though, that strike the right chord.

There is no such thing as a selfless good deed.

That’s true because nothing that you do, if it ultimately brings you happiness, is ever done in vain. The next one is good too.

If you really love her you’ll set her free.

See, when you free someone, you’re making yourself happy; something you might not do intentionally, but will definitely feel in the long run.

On a yet unrelated, but soon to be related, note, I’m an enthusiast of the theory of everything. There is this one interpretation I particularly like colloquially known as the many universes theory. I’d state it as follows.

‘Anything that could happen, will happen. Every universe is a specific combination of a series of events like that. Every combination is possible and exists in at least one of the universes. Every universe differs from ours by at least one event; an event being a series of time dependent changes transpiring in even the shortest time possible. The probability of having an event happen in at least one of the universes is unity.’

That was pretty cryptic, wasn’t it? Let me explain that with a scene study.

The Scene

It’s your first day at college. You see a cute chick (or a dude, whatever you’re in to). And that’s it. A lot of things could happen.

What could happen?

1. You may or may not fall in love with them at first sight. You most likely won’t, so you’ll repeat this step a few times.
2. If you do, you may just sit on one corner all year in a position where you can moon over them at them all day thinking of a good conversation starter. Or you might boldly go ahead and just talk to them. Maybe make a politically-correct joke while you’re at it.
3. They may or may not like you. You can start over with step 1 if they don’t. At this point, you’ll waive the love at first sight rule.
4. If they do like you, you’ll have a future with them where they influence your life very significantly as compared to everything else.
5. There are infinite ways for your life to progress with or without them.

Out of those infinite possibilities of things that could go down between the two of you, one definitely happens with you, in what you can rightfully call your universe, and you will witness that in real life while you dream about the favourable others, from time to time.

Wait! WTF?!

I know. That scene study raises more questions than it answers. How do we apply the many universes interpretation here if at all? Well, that’s simple!

Since the possibility of a certain given chain of causality in at least one universe is a hundred percent, it is absolutely certain that in at least one universe you’re the happiest person on the planet.

Some examples to that effect

1. In typing the scene I just demonstrated, I accidentally typed ‘you’re’ instead of ‘your’ which is an annoying mistake for a grammar nazi. Every typo I pointed out and every grammatical correction I’ve advised, in the entirety of my life, would all be put to question if I hadn’t rectified it; at least that’s how I think it ought to be. I would be a hypocrite if this post got published before I corrected it which, now that I think of it, I shouldn’t have mentioned. There does exist a lot of universes where I published this post without the correction; this one’s just not one of them. The me, of those universes, is suffering eternal torment at the moment. In yet another universe, the error despite being published wasn’t discovered at all. In yet another one, the error was quietly corrected and the first example of this post isn’t this very stupid grammar-fix confession. In a totally different universe, I might not have been born to begin with.
2. There’s this girl I loved in school. I kept a safe distance for as long as I had to, so as to understand her thought processes. I couldn’t. I never made a move. If I’ve ever had a regret… no, I’ve had none, but not telling her about my feelings comes pretty close. I wish I could relive them and do things differently. That’s where my alternate universe counterpart comes in. There’ll be a few million universes where I didn’t go through this decade long chickening out and actually talked to her. Among those universes, there are a few where I’ve lived with her happily ever after. I’m happy for that version of me.
3. There’s this girl in college I loved. I tried not to continue this stupid game of analysing the way her mind worked, and actually talked to her whenever I could. Turns out, I suck at saying anything remotely normal. We didn’t have many conversations in those two years and each time I talked it was weird even by my standards. Somehow, however, my feelings for her kept growing. Now that I think of it, I must’ve just carried forward my feelings for my school love. So, two people I’ve loved in my life; the second I’m not so sure of. How could this have gone differently? In an alternate universe I’m with her, right now. In yet another one I’m gifted with enough mental capacity to know for sure if I really loved her. There’s another universe where I’m boring her with this theory at the very moment. In a totally different universe I might not have been born to begin with – I’m starting to get oddly jealous of that me.
4. In a parallel universe I’m the owner of Microsoft. Who wouldn’t be happy for that me?!
5. In a parallel universe I was the one who first stepped on Mars. In another one, on the sun – one of those where thermal insulators are perfected beyond current limits. In another one I’m actually a native of an alien planet named Die-Ass who has come here to study humankind, but mostly womankind. Better still, there’s a universe where everyone knows that the earth’s moon is named Luna and sun is named Sol.
6. Add your own here…
7. This post was once a note on Facebook, designed to comfort a friend who was in dire need of happiness^#. She had lost someone very dear to her. A little over two years ago this was all I could offer. I still cannot get myself to fathom the real pains of being human; probably, because I found the key to happiness. It is the only key I truly own. Maybe in a parallel universe, this continues to be inaccessible to the republic of the internet. I feel sorry for Iran where the internet has been severely curtailed to only make domestic sites available.

The point is that there definitely does exist a life you dreamt about. You’re just not able to live it as that is being lived by another you in another universe. That realisation is the key to happiness.

How do I be happy?

1. Think about the ideal way of life; a life you’d live if you had the chance.
2. Understand that in another universe your exact counterpart is living that very life and is happy.
3. Be happy for them.

By the way, I can’t imagine a better life than the one I’m living, but this is just one of those situations where you amongst everyone win a lottery, only a lot rarer.

^# It might not have been much help but this is all I could do from a distance. It believe that’s at least better than the universe where I might not have been born to begin with…