Hello Everyone,
If you are reading this, chances are that you might very well have come across the more trending concepts of “Mindfulness” and “Heartfulness”. I am not export to delve too deep into these ideas ( this blog is meant for another idea), but they emphasise on that advantages of applying your mind and heart, respectively, to whatever it is that you are doing at a particular moment. Mind and Heart are two entirely different entities when it comes to spirituality so , may be, we will go through this in another blog at a different time
I want to write about an idea which we manifested as kids so often and which hasn’t just evolved in recent times - “Cheerfulness”. Even for those with difficult childhoods, there were large swathes of time for laughter and play, for those cheers of joy and excitement when with friends your age. It came to us so naturally and rightly so.
As we aged, the world led us into believing that there were responsibilities that would first need to be completed before one could afford to be cheerful. It was almost as if cheerfulness needed to be earned and not spent as was the case in our younger days. The pressures of responsibilities, the need to deliver on worldly expectations weighed on and cheerfulness receded to the background
Dark clouds of worry and tension due to fear for the future surfaced requiring more and more of men’s attention to “pay attention” to these worrying signs lest the future may turn dark. Alas, the cruel irony went unnoticed ; that the more you focussed on your worries the more they expanded and before you knew you were surrounded by worries which you feel were insurmountable. Depression followed for many and nothing seemed to offer redemption from this gloomy worrisome life
This is where one needs to beckon cheerfulness. It is like the sun peeking through the cloudy weather offering the glimmer of hope that there is a way out of the darkness one has attracted. Cheerfulness is not a war you wage against worry, it is much like an understanding granny that tells the neurotic grandchild, “worry”, “look beta take it easy; there is nothing that you can achieve by being a narcissist and fixating on yourself. Allow me to play with you for just that little bit”
Worrying takes the vitality out of your life. The little things you enjoyed such as spending time with your son, going for the morning jog, listening to your mother narrating stories of yesteryear’s seem to offer much less happiness at times of worry than at other times. Cheerfulness is NOT to deliberately force a laughter when you are tensed but to let you know what you don’t have to keep worrying about an issue 24/7 that there are are other equally important things to make you happy. After all, life is about being happy, isn’t it? You have to allow for the first rays of cheerfulness to shine through from behind the dark clouded of worry. You will then begin the see worries receding ever so slightly and as you keep loving your life giving equal importance to things that make you happy, the rays of cheerfulness become stronger dispelling the mythical clouds of worry. The external situation did not change, you changed something within you, something that told you that fixating on the worry was like offering it an open invitation to sit on the couch at your living room messing up your life.
Cheerfulness was your true nature. That’s what you were blessed with when born, why trade it for something the less informed world has forced upon you. As Guruji said, “stop worrying, hop, skip and dance”- that will help !
