Learning to smile at myself

Life is strange. We all go through the tapestry of our daily life not realising that we are living some of the best moments possible. A year ago, I hardly had a clue my life would shape up like it has. I was then leading a very busy life. I had my routine rituals. I planned my busy weekends and fumed over the busier weekdays. I fussed about the inability to put my feet up. I cooked, cleaned, wrote and exercised and constantly complained. What did I have to complain about? Nothing. Was I happy then? Yes. Did I know, then, that I was happy ? Probably not. That, I think is the biggest misery of human kind.

Most of us agree that, some of the best memories etched in our brain have many images from our childhood. Yet, I can’t recollect many images from the previous year. I can’t recollect particular moments when I felt blissful. I guess, I was too busy doing my mundane chores. But, why don’t I have memories of so many days from the year that went by?

Happiness, they say, is a state of mind. I was too busy in life to notice that ‘happiness’ was camping in my head. I believed that, unless I smiled a lot or laughed my head off, I couldn’t lure ‘happiness’ into the open. How would I have known that all that it required was to gently stroke my head and I could automatically smile. And while, it lasted, I didn’t bother to pause. Somehow, I never learnt the trick. Like they say, only others notice happiness in your life while you are oblivious that it exists.

Today, as I pause a bit when life unfolds a new challenge, I force a smile. I look at options to smile and revel in that little curve on my face. I watch comedy shows and my respect for Charlie Chaplin multiplies. I wonder why it unfortunately always takes a challenge to appreciate the beautiful facets that life offers. I take a look back at my life — so many journeys, so many roads, so many experiences. Somewhere, I forgot to gather all the priceless moments I had spent and savour them. The moments of bliss, like when I was little, I waited to grow up.

During adulthood especially motherhood, I wanted the child to grow up quickly as I was too tired doing the numerous things. I lost my son’s childhood and a great many things to time. I forgot again to live in the moment of my son’s messy drool sticking to my face because, I was busy trying to get it off.

Life is not cruel but sadly, I learnt the ways of life a tad bit late in my life. As I pick up the thread and head towards a new road, I tell myself the golden mantra — to live every moment and savour them. In my pursuit of happiness that I had previously defined as the big moments filled with laughter, I lost a huge chunk of life that contained countless number of smaller and insignificant priceless smiles. I now have to pause a lot more, linger a bit longer at every stage. I resolve to learn to smile not just at insignificant things, but also learn to smile at myself. After all, next year this time, I want to reminisce about a lot more things than remember my life as a Formula 1 driver.

Sudha Subramanian is an independent journalist based in Dubai.