Wanting Happiness
A couple of weeks before his wedding day, his Company
decided to fold up and he was left dangling on a small severance package with
nothing else in sight.
“Cancel
the wedding,” said the sane voices in his family and hers. “Wait until you find
another job.”
“We’re
not cancelling the wedding. We’re getting married as planned,” he said
“Not
as planned, maybe,” piped in the bride-to-be. “We’ll have a smaller wedding.
Fewer guests. A smaller menu. A smaller hall. Recorded music. But we are
getting married. We’re not going to wait.”
“Why
the hurry?”
“No
hurry,” he said. “Just no worry.”
“Aren’t
you worried about how you will manage?” That was Sanity speaking.
“We
will manage,” he said with a confidence that foxed them.
“How
can you say that?” Sanity needed to know.
“Simple,”
he said. We don’t need much. We don’t want much.”
The
wedding was small in size, but big on jollity. The bride’s smile stretched from
ear to ear, right from wedding march to the rollicking chaired kiss.
And
it continued through the days after; that ear-to-ear labial stretch foxing the
sane and the worldly wise as the couple took life in their stride. What people
saw was Contentment laced with cheer. Were they putting on a show? How long
would the severance money last? Did he have some unaccounted money stashed up
somewhere? Were they living on loans? Some malicious investigations revealed
that it was none of those. The fact is he was trying for another job, but jobs
were not easy in those days.
“Companies
are broke, poor guys,” our new bridegroom would sympathise with the corporate
world that let him down.
He
took in some free-lance assignments. He bought himself a typewriter and some
basic office equipment and set up his own little office at home. And got paid
for small jobs he did. She gave piano lessons. “There’s enough currency between
those flats and sharps,” she said with that ear-to-ear punctuation. “But I’m
doing it moderato for now. In any case,
we don’t need much. We don’t want much. We have to keep time for each other,
you know.”
They
kept time for each other and for their friends. She even took over the
children’s choir and in time would persuade you to attend a practice session.
“Come and listen to them,” she would urge you. “They sound like angels.”
Life was beautiful at all times, they
said, whatever happened.
One
day, returning from his aunt’s place, our man came back with a rose plant. It
was one of those cluster roses that he always admired. Lovingly he planted it
in a pot. It thrived with huge clusters of little white roses. Soon he was able
to make other cuttings from that rose tree. He put them in plastic bags and
kept them outside his house for sale. On day one he sold a plant. The customer
paid Rs.10 for it. Our man was over the moon. “I made ten rupees out of
nothing,” he almost sang.
He
read a lot about plants; spoke to gardeners and stopped in front of every nice
garden he passed by. This, he told himself is what he wanted to do. Gardening.
Plants and flowers did something to him. What music did to his wife, plants did
to him.
He
spoke to his cousin who had garden space around his house. Together they set up
a nursery, which made plants available at reasonable prices to all nature
lovers. Our man now had become an expert gardener. He could reel off botanical
names as fluently as the litany of the BVM. Today he knows how to relate
seasons to species, knows when to prune, when to plant and how to talk to a
recalcitrant cactus. He has regular customers, some of them institutional.
While he sometimes sells his plants in truckloads, the money comes in smaller
packets. But enough to draw those smiles across those faces.
“You
can make a lot more,” his friends would tell him, “if only you….”
“We
don’t need much. We don’t want much,” was their now known antiphon.
Life
has moved on for our couple. Two children: a boy and a girl. The boy loves
hockey and a nice young thing who he hopes to marry soon. To your casual “How’s
life?” he answers: “Beautiful.” With that inherited ear-to-ear expression.
The
daughter plays and teaches piano, but her great love she reserves for animals.
She picks up sick and wounded dogs and cats, brings them home, nurses them back
to health and gives them up for adoption. One of the dogs she has made her own
and trained him to do the most incredible tricks. One of them is what she calls
the barking metronome. She tells the dog which song she is going to play on the
piano and he barks the minims and crotchets in tempo. For reward he is given a
doggie snack. Now the dog smiles from ear to ear.
“You
all are always so happy. Is there nothing that makes you sad?” I once asked
them.
“Yes,”
he said. “I feel sad when I read the newspapers. All those reports of men and
women and even children committing suicide because they were not able to get
what they wanted – that makes me sad. I feel sad when I see other children in
the neighbourhood; my friends’ children and others who have so much and want
more. Every child has a mobile phone, but he wants a better one because his
friend has one. He has an MP3 player but his friend has an IPod. So he is
unhappy. Sad,” he said, shaking his head. “People want things. That’s bad.
Wanting is the first step to unhappiness.”
“But
isn’t it natural to want things?”
“Yes
it is. But it is better to do things
rather than want. It is better to feel. Rather than want. If you can manage not to want, you can manage to be
happy.” He said.
Our
man was no philosopher and that short lecture didn’t fit in with his
personality. His best sermon was his life, his family. The happiest family I
know.
This appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Fr. Agnel Ashram News
This appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Fr. Agnel Ashram News
Ivan Arthur
http://arthurivann.blogspot.in/
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