It is nice to be genuinely happy. But it is the salad-without-dressing variety kind of happiness that is suspect. I am against happiness gurus who implore people to fake happiness in the hope of finding happiness. The gurus think that something is drastically wrong with you if you are not happy. Their case is that if you are not delirious with joy every minute, you should see a therapist. You pursue happiness when you are sad, or why else would you run after it. I am glad Newsweek published an excellent article in support of sadness.


If it matters to someone who is desperate to be happy, may I remind them that the genius Charlie Chaplin, who made everyone laugh, had passed through many melancholic moments in his personal life. Though many were of his own making, there could be little doubt his strokes of genius would have been conceptualized in those private moments. I can cite his film Modern Times (1936) as a good example. Isn’t it amazing that it reflects our times as well as it did in his days? He couldn’t have been happy all the time and portray sadness just for the movies.

In our moment of loss this quote from Eckart Tolle (in his famous book ‘The Power of Now’) should come in handy, “Accept it as if you have chosen it”. There is no other sensible way to handle the loss. It is ridiculous to put up a brave, but fake smile on one’s face denying the loss.

Emerson’s railway bonds crashed in the panic of 1857, and he wrote about it only once. Similarly when his house burned down, he recorded it just once: House burned. Though Emerson wrote about his losses only once, at least he acknowledged it.

My conviction is that if we admit our sadness, we come to terms with ourselves . Our quiet acceptance leads to some serious introspection that eventually may or may not lead us out of our current state of gloom. But either way it doesn’t matter. In such private moments we ask ourselves many silly, irrelevant questions, out of which one pertinent answer may emerge that would solve one of our eluding problems.


For those who chase happiness at all costs, running away from sadness; may I quote my guru Al Koran, “You cannot pursue happiness. You cannot arrange to be happy. Happiness is something that fills the moment and it comes upon you unawares …..”

Couldn’t agree any more with that. Can you?