The "happy people" of the world

There are some people who live life fully, savoring every moment of it, happy. For them, there are no worries, no hassles. You’ll see them smile and you’ll know the warmth of their hearts and the joy they carry within them. As hard as I might try to categorize myself as one of them, I can’t. I might be happy overall, but there are a million worries that plague my mind all the time. I’ve made action plans to deal with them and any plan that fails brings along its share of grief. The good thing about me is that I can appreciate “happy people”. And I have a friend who’s one of them. This post is about him and how his magic has rubbed off on me in many ways.

I was supposed to be on the editorial board of one of these local magazines that was around. And since no one really wrote articles for this silly magazine, I wrote an article for it too, every now and then. I was forever finding ways to skip this activity. God's kind and one fine day, one fine man decided he would save me trouble by writing the article that I was supposed to. That was how I met him first, my “happy friend”. He was in another part of the world those days, busy spreading his cheer around there. The first chat we had was nondescript. There was a very noticeable enthusiasm and energy in his tone, but I stick with my comment that it was ordinary. Young people are generally enthusiastic. We didn’t keep in touch after that.

I was doing a lot of things those days, was a member of uncountable number of committees and organizations. One of these committees was planning an event and was hoping to get a lot of people involved in it. We faced never ending woes with it and finally when all looked fine, there was a setback. We ran out on our options for an experienced compere for the event. That’s when someone suggested this fun fella as an option. It was my “happy friend” whom they were talking about. He had landed in our part of the world a few days back and people found him amusing and what they called “fun”! “An option” was better than “no options” and so we took him on board. We pulled it off decently. I got to know him a bit more that day and knew he was one of them, the "happy people" of the world.

I never spotted him without a smile on his face. He was simple. He was like a little kid when he spoke. He would ramble on forever talking of things that made him happy. He would describe how life’s been super good. When he talked of his home town and his people, his eyes would light up with a special kind of sparkle. He loved what he did, both at work and outside of it. Like all of us, he had his own set of worries, but he paid them no attention and focused on the joys in life. His bunch of friends, the little jokes he wrote and contributed to the magazines around, his ambition of writing a book, the thrill of sky diving, the village life he lived when he was in that other part of the world and so on. There were a million things he could have cribbed about and I knew of it. Like a sadist, I waited for the day when he would give up and tell me about all things that were wrong. That day never came. I met him recently after around 2 years and found nothing had changed. There are only more happy stories to listen to and rejoice :). Yes, this time around, he talked about a few things that to me, looked like they went wrong. But he spoke of it so positively and with so much of an optimistic context that I couldn’t help but be in awe of the happiness of his spirit.

I’ve learnt a lot of things from this fella. I’ve changed in a lot of ways. I’ve become more carefree and joyous, in general. I’ve become “cooler”. I don’t take setbacks to heart that much. I know that nothing is the end of the world. The most valuable lesson I picked up is that life is only as good as you think it is. I’ve in fact, used these lessons when I have been put to test and have seen it through.

As for this beautiful friend of mine, I wish that his joyride never ends!