The Hindu Business Line : Gandhiji's secret for a life of happiness

IF YOU live next to a railway track, you don't hear the trains. Most people "have become so used to not being happy that they barely even notice it," write Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth in What Happy People Know, published by St. Martin's Griffin (www.stmartins.com).

"No matter how numb you may become, life goes on. Days become years, until life is still there but the living is gone." A lesser life, notes the book, and a good lesson too for life.

There are a dozen qualities of happiness, and six happiness tools the book lists. There are also five `happiness traps', viz., trying to buy happiness, find happiness through pleasure, be happy by resolving the past, be happy by overcoming weaknesses, and force happiness. On money trap, the results of a Gallup Poll would show that `virtually no one feels rich': "People making $10,000 a year believed that those who made $50,000 were rich, and those who made $50,000 thought that people making $200,000 were rich. Those making $200,000 were still scared of their burgeoning bills and feeling the heat of perceived scarcity." The authors exhort: "Face facts: Scarcity is burned into your brain. You'll probably never feel as if you have enough money. It's time for you to accept this. And rise above it."

Leisure is again a tricky word that most people never come to terms with. "Leisure presents a terrible quandary for people with money. Either they don't have enough of it because they're always working, or they don't work at all and are drowning in it." Leisure is a state of mind, state the authors, and narrate an anecdote: "Once Mohandas Gandhi was asked, `You have been working at least 15 hours a day, every day, for almost 50 years. Don't you think it's time for a vacation?' Gandhi replied, `I am always on vacation.'"

A must-read for the vacation.

Mysteries uncovered

FROM the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull comes a new book, The Last War, published by Scribner (www.simonsays.com). Part of `the Ferret Chronicles', this is about `Detective Ferrets and the case of the Golden Deed'. "Every mystery cloaks an inner reason, each one gives its meaning only when we have allowed ourselves a new point of view. Through observation, inquiry, through the kaleidoscope of intuition, we detect what has been facing us all along."

Does that sound similar to what the CA Institute asks its members to do when performing audit?

Live the life you want to

WITH 52 chapters, one for each week of the year, Leslie Levine's book Wish It, Dream It, Do It is about turning the life you're living into `the life you want'. Levine gets the reader to focus on "what's inside — what moves you, makes you happy, and drives you to become a whole and authentic individual."

In week 1, the author talks about fears: "Many of us worry that others will find out that we're frauds. This is especially true when we begin to inch ever so slowly toward our dreams. Remember this: Pursuing your dreams is never a fraudulent act."

The next week, you would `summon your creativity'. When faced with adversity and you handle it well, it is creativity in action, points out the author. Elsewhere, you'd know how to `embrace your imperfections'. Don't equate perfection with accomplishment, because "if that's true, how could so many innovations be the result of countless mistakes and accidents?" Focus on your strengths, therefore, not someone else's. "Do your best, not someone else's best." Role models motivate, but emulating can become destructive and counterproductive "when your admiration jeopardises your authenticity."

Perfectionism is a big stumbling block in more than one ways. "The absence of perfect conditions becomes an excuse for not doing what we've set out to do... Rather than seize opportunities to achieve, you look for reasons to stay inactive." Again, "striving for perfection will inevitably bring you face-to-face with failure."

By week 6, you would "show the world who you are". Some weeks later, you will learn how to `cherish and honour your work space'. It need not be perfect, but it should `create an area that helps you focus'. Also, "Think about where you might create a temporary work space. A bench in a nearby park, a room in a museum, a favourite café, and even your local library offer opportunities to work in fresh surroundings."

At the end of the book, is a pleading: "Let your soul breathe." Because, "if your spirit doesn't get the oxygen it needs, your efforts to turn what you want into what is yours will fall flat." And on luck, that must be top on the minds of most CA students, a piece of advice: "Counting your blessings amid moments of despair can actually enhance your outlook."

So, when are you starting your yearlong journey?

Wanted, a new god

THE world is too full of people who think only they are right and the others, wrong. So, is the planet people with the right ones or the wrong ones? How foolish! Which is why it doesn't really make sense for groups to fight with one another, as if the one goal were to head towards total destruction.

Is there hope? Yes, says Neale Donald Walsch in Tomorrow's God, published by Atria Books (www.simonsays.com).

"Humanity will soon re-create its experience of God in such a way that our experience of one another will be healed at last," he writes. "The New Spirituality will allow humans to express their natural impulse toward the Divine without making one another wrong for the way in which they are doing it, and without killing one another in the name of it." When is that `future'? Thirty years, promises the intro.

"Humanity cannot afford any more temper tantrums. We have found a way to pack the end of the world into a briefcase. We can seal the death of civilised society in a spore-filled envelope and simply mail it off." Walsch is not kidding, but `godding', or even goading us to work out an alternative, fast.

Don't postpone this to tomorrow.

Backyard scientist

EVEN as you sit and watch TV, your kid is working at the computer, feverishly chatting on the `messenger', or, loitering in the backyard. Are you sure that your child is not building a nuclear reactor? You can't be, as Ken Silverstein's book The Radioactive Boy Scout, published by Random House (www.atrandom.com) would show while narrating the true story of David Hahn — who "at the ripe old age of sixteen and a half" set out "to succeed where armies of trained scientists with infinite resources had failed." Keep the book out of reach of children!

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"We have a sophisticated attendance system in our office. It uses biometrics!"

"Ours is more state-of-the-art. They check our genes everyday."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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