Happiness is overrated.

Really, it is.

There is nothing great about it.  Nothing lasting.  How we tire ourselves in the “pursuit of happiness” –  only to find it, and then to lose it.  Like sadness, fear, joy, excitement – happiness is just, at the final analysis, a feeling…an emotion .

My goal in life is NOT to be happy.

My goal in life is TO BE content.  To simply be in the moment.  To be at peace, in a neutral state, regardless of what else is happening around me.

My goal in life IS TO BE.

I remember  a yoga teacher once say – “You should always just say, ‘very nice, very nice’.  Things go well?  ‘very nice very nice.’  Things did not go well?  ‘very nice, very nice’. Why should your reaction be any different?  It will pass.  You are happy now, and then later you will be sad.  It does not matter.”

It seems counterintuitive.  Yes, it does.  Hundreds, millions flock to yoga classes all around the world to escape from the stress, the world, from problems and from annoying people, to try to find happiness in that yoga class.  I used to be one of those people. And I’ll let you in on a little secret.   I DID NOT FIND IT.  I did not find happiness in the upward dogs, in the 108 sun salutations, in the 10 minute headstands, in the 10 million ways you can twist and turn your body.  I did not find happiness in yoga.

Like I said, it’s overrated.

And yet what I did find, was a better capacity to face my demons, to deal with the stressful things in my life, to learn to embrace the world (yes, even all the annoying people in it!) – to be better equipped to try to remain connected to my true self,  to be neutral despite the workings of the mind.

Happiness, like everything else, is of the mind.  And the mind, is a tricky little thing.  It takes us from extreme sadness to extreme happiness in a split second.  The very thing that causes us happiness, can later on cause us pain.  Do not trust your mind.  “Yoga chitta vritti nirodha” – yoga is to calm the fluctuations of the mind – to achieve that neutral state of being. To simply JUST BE.

No, I did not find happiness in yoga.  Why should I and why would I even want to?  In the upward dogs, in the 108 sun salutations, in the 10 minute headstand, in the 10 million ways of twisting and turning the body – I learned instead to be in the moment, embrace and melt into the pose  no matter how challenging that pose might be. I learned to accept each pose, with all its glory and with all my limitations of what I can and cannot do.  I learned to welcome what the universe brings, with utmost trust and with complete faith that it will all be ‘very nice, very nice.’