Comfortably numb

3: 45 a.m. Here I am! surrounded with whirling fumes of cigarettes and bidis, hazy aroma of white rum. Yes, you are right, this is another Saturday night. What am I waiting for? Probably just holding on to this elusive feeling of freedom. The right to wake up as late as I wish to. The right to be not bothered by pesky calls from office, the right to be unaware about the time in my draconian alarm clock, the right to be ME for one day, and not to be another guy who reports into somebody, who reports into somebody else...

Last night somebody asked me, "are you happy?". Well, its always difficult to answer such open-ended questions. I answered in affirmative, as earnestly as possible, with my limited theatrical skills. But it got me thinking. What is happiness? What is satisfaction? Is it living in the moment, or is it the pursuit , the journey, the hope of success and the fear of failure? If being happy is as ephemeral as the moment which just passed by, I am ecstatic. But if it is a point in one's life at which he should aim for and plan for, well, I am clueless.

Maybe this discontent is because of the way human DNA is designed: to face the ups and downs, lows and highs, success and failures, not to be immune by externalities.
People around me seem to have that definitive course of action, a strategy for sure shot happiness. I simply lack that foresight. Their life is like that sine wave, with crest and troughs. Meanwhile, mine is that straight line which never wavers. No highs, no lows. No aims, no success, no disappointments. Some call it "robotic existence", I, ambivalence.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.