Do you know what gives you happiness? I hope you do. Otherwise, think about it today. To talk about what gives us happiness, let’s first talk about needs and wants. We all have needs and wants. Needs are what I would call as essentials for my basic existence and social status. Money is a need. Job is a need. A house or a car can also be a need. Satisfying the needs may not really give us true happiness. Needs follow Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. Once you satisfy yourself of a need, the other need is created or you create it. Needs are not wants. Wants are the expectations and desires that you as a person have for yourself. Unless you know what you want, you can never be happy.

The richest man is not the happiest man. The strongest man is not the happiest man. The most handsome man is not the happiest man. The most powerful man is not the happiest man. Even if one man happens to be the richest, the strongest, the most handsome and the most powerful, he may still not be the happiest man. Being rich, strong, handsome and powerful are all needs, temporary needs. These are needs that one may not realise as temporary needs when he has not achieved them.

Needs are those that you want ‘for your life’. Wants are those that you want ‘from your life’. Now that we have separated needs and wants, what are your wants? As we realise, needs never end. They only grow. While they are growing, think of your wants as well. What do you want from your life? How do you want to lead your life? Now compare the answers for this question with the list of needs that you have. You’ll realise that it is highly possible to satisfy your wants without satisfying your needs. Bed is a need and sleep is a want. If you keep upgrading beds without sleeping enough or realising that sleep is what you want more than the bed, it would be a sad life. For the society, you could be a grand success for only you know that you’ve wasted your life.

It’s quite important to know if we are driven by wants or needs. Needs are meant to be supporting your wants. Your wants are the purpose of your life. Your needs are supposed to help you further. Your needs don’t exist by themselves. They are there because you have certain wants. While the needs support the wants, they have no reason to exist if you have no wants. In reality, there could be people who have not identified their wants. But they would have identified their needs otherwise the society would help them identify. It is fully possible for someone to spend all their lives running behind the needs and dying without even thinking about what they actually want.

In the normal course of life, we are prepared only to handle our needs. Our education and our careers are all about handling needs. So it’s quite possible to get into this quick sand of needs and believe that’s all life is all about. Needs have no purpose by themselves. Getting rich, attaining power and reaching targets are all supposed to give you something. That’s what one must be aware of.

People who don’t identify their wants will never be happy. Because, having achieved all the needs, they would still experience that emptiness which they can’t explain. That happens when you don’t know what you want from your life. Now think of those things that make you really happy, things that give you sense of satisfaction. Exclude gratifications which are different from happiness. Gratifications arise as you fulfil a need or a desire. Think of only those things that you want from life, only those things you want others to give and you want to give to others. Once you know your wants, and once you realise that they are the very driving force of your life, needs may not even matter, let alone being very important.

For all of us, the want is to be happy. That’s for each one of us. We tend to believe that happiness comes in being more rich, more powerful and all that but the reality is happiness comes in being happy. It’s as simple as that. I want to live my life happily and spread this happiness to as many people as possible. That’s my want. My happiness comes in being happy. And I realise that unhappiness disappears when you create happiness for others. I think life is simple unless you’re bored with it and try complicating it.

That’s my philosophy in a nutshell, or in a blog entry, to be exact. This philosophy of mine is something I have concluded and realised based on understanding and experience of life. Don’t go on to try proving them wrong. Because I’m not open for logic