Q. What is happiness? And How do I achieve it?

A. Happiness is a state of mind.

and you achieve it by trying not to achieve anything. ;)

When I first read this somewhere. I was puzzled. Then one day, I was traveling in metro, in the ladies compartment, where you see little kids with their mothers all the time.

One little girl was jumping up and down, holding the pole, revolving around it, simultaneously and spontaneously inventing games, which no grown up understood, so everyone laughed, including me.

I watched her with amazement and I wondered - Isn't this happiness?

Her state of mind is in complete harmony !

But Why?

I realized, she is not trying to do anything. things are just happening in her and she is not stopping it. She is just "Letting It BE".

In fact when her mother tries to stop her, she becomes sad for a while. She stops but is restless and is waiting carefully for a window of opportunity. And soon when her mother is not looking, she frees herself and giggles, and starts repeating the ceremonious jumping, revolving, laughing etc.

I saw that her mother is happy too, seeing the mischief, she is smiling now.

We are also like this, we were all happy when we were just letting things happen within us, when we were not stopping ourselves from doing anything that our hearts wanted us to. The intentions behind her actions were so pure, so godly and so humanly.

When our heart wants something which has such pure and harmless intentions, yet we try to stop ourselves from doing it, we are sad and restless like her. We wait restlessly for the next window of opportunity. Sometimes, we wait for a whole lifetime and regret in the end, that we dint do what our heart wanted us to do.

Awareness of this in itself has freed me somehow... I know I can be happy now. I don't try to be happy, that will be useless and frustrating.

A simple mantra is "Let It BE".

So, will I be happy all the time, if I just Let it Be?

No, that is not possible, my mind would become bored and dumb. Suffering is a teacher, without which I will never graduate from this life.

But I freed myself of an Idea that WE should TRY to be Happy.

Trying is useless... Just let it BE!!!!