Kitchen Rants: “Your cart is missing you.”

My reverie that day was broken with my phone beeping on me. Notification it was, and it read, ‘your cart is missing you.’ This confirms there is someone who misses me; and well, here is a documented proof. Notifications bring in a plethora of responses with them. The variety of responses on seeing these notifications are noteworthy. What better way for an insight to life than humans themselves. Noticing human behavior has been my favorite task ever; and mind you, “I am still a homemaker, not a therapist.”

Coming back to my cart, it misses me a little too much, and if I don’t respond in the desired way, it stalks me with a warning – ‘shop now or regret later.’ The red stilettos which I left in my cart just make things worse. Succumbing to these warnings, my dilemma continues as to where should I stack up the black ones I got last month. So, this brings me to my topic of contemplation today – ‘how happy do you need to be to actually feel happy?’ Well, if there is any benchmark at all for measuring the same.

What is that which actually makes us happy? Do we really get happy on achieving what we set to achieve; for instance, the black stilettos I got last month or the red ones I want to get now?

I remember Peter Parker wanting to get this brown leather jacket and stating it as the ultimate happiness. He managed to get it too eventually, but this month the ultimate happiness got shifted to a burgundy one. What happened to that ultimate happiness he acquired on getting the brown one?

If acquiring the material happiness would actually make us happy then Siddhartha would have been the happiest ever. Better known to the world as Gautam Buddha, he was born to a king who wouldn’t let any winds of despair touch his son. He had built the walls of his palace so high that no troubles would ever dare to trespass the high walls and agonize his son. But not only did Siddhartha abandon these bounties, but he also fled from the palace in pursuit of happiness. He attained the ultimate inner peace and left behind a lot of answers for the world to pay heed and work on.

So does that make all the rich people in the world happy? Does acquiring all those monetary benefits make us satisfied or do our needs aggravate further? We humans as species are wired with the formula of being dissatisfied for life.

No matter what we have, this peculiar habit of being unhappy with what we have and assuming that we would be happier with what we don’t is a universal reality. Somehow we spend our whole lives trying to achieve those things which we don’t have. This bucket list keeps only piling up. In one way, this is what makes us different from other species.

Our generations have thrived on this one formula which we hypothetically term as – ambitions, goals, wants or desires.

The desire to have that one impossible thing has kept us going from ages. But, is there an end to this? Is there a fix to this problem? It’s the solution to this problem which would probably make us happy, and we often hide or guard ourselves against the resolutions. We detest pain, hurt, rejections, and disappointment. It’s going through these painful processes, which make us happy at the end. Not only do they make us stronger, but they also teach us what we should be expecting and what we should refrain from, somewhat like what Siddhartha had tried to achieve.

It’s often the anxiety about the future and forgetting to enjoy and relish the present, which makes us a sorrowful tribe. In the process of anticipating the future we often tend to forget to enjoy the present (gift) we have right with us. As these deep thoughts dawn upon me and leave me perplexed furthermore; the rotis on the tawa turn dark brown from golden. The aroma turns into an unpleasant odor when my phone goes beeping again, and this time the message reads, ‘hurry up others are eyeing your favorite products’!