Happy! Am I ?

Mujhe dekho khwahish e jaan e jaan 
main wohi hoon anwar e neem jaan
tumhein itna hosh tha jab kahaan 
na chalao is tarah tum zubaan
karo mera shukriya meherbaan 
tumhein baat karna sikha diya

— Ye Jo Halka Halka Suroor — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Can we ever be fully content? The question often hovers about my senses but disappears right before I attempt to answer it. I am not particularly happy or unhappy but something in me vacillates and stirs me to hold fast onto mirth. I don't easily give into melancholy. I think deep inside I must possess a cheerfully thumping heart. My pals will vouch that I have a funny bone. I must concede that I have a couple of them.

Positivity helps. It makes us think clear and neat. There are lots of pits and pockmarks and punctures on the high road to bliss but the car -- as they say -- must trundle on. Life's beautiful. Why not color it into a giant canvass? Touch the gentler shades. Trim the non-linear parts.

When we tend to become mirthless and dispirited, don't we rob ourselves of much beautiful moments in life? Soon...we forget to frolic and laugh. We capitulate to gloom. I reckon, falling into endless layers of sorrow helps only the woebegones and makes humans very sour. That is some silly baggage all of us must readily shed.

Life is but a race. There are times when I find millions of things stacked up against me. As if God is playing dice with a ham-handed soul. The answer definitely is not lying low. It is only rising up -- and above -- after every steep and not-so-steep fall. This is the basic human essence all great philosophers -- from the dialectical Socrates to Sartre -- attempt to say.

I can be emotional but not gloomy. I am sentimental but markedly happy!
Opposites work, very often.

Sam