Decluttering Is The Key To Lasting Happiness

 Yesterday I saw a group of five students from a government school, relishing samosas from a roadside vendor. 

Perhaps due to paucity of money, they bought only three samosas, savoured them jointly with immense satisfaction, joyfulness. 

As compared to their public / convent school counterparts, I have found that government school students are far more robust, realistic. 

On my evening walks, I often see rickshaw pullers, huddled together, singing devotional songs, ecstatically beating dilapidated small drums. 

Although they sleep in the open, have very little to eat or sometimes have to sleep empty stomach, they celebrate life, rejoice as if they have found heaven on earth. 

On the contrary I have seen many wallowing in luxuries, but always with long faces, utterly discontented with their lives. 

They can't sleep without taking sleeping pills!

Clearly happiness does not lies in accumulation, riches. 

I have observed that the inside world of most of us is chock-a-block with unfulfilled desires, endless commitments. 

For lasting happiness, one must minimize one's desires, commitments. 

"Decluttering" is the key to delight, inner peace. 

There is a very strong link between outside world and inside world. To declutter the inner world, it is imperative to first dejunk the outside world. 

We are in the habit of mindlessly buying, gathering things. 

I opine that one should keep only the below mentioned things : 

(a) Things that one use often. 

(b) Things that one would surely use in the future. 

(c) Things that have emotional value. 

To decongest the outside world, one must either donate or ruthlessly trash all the things that do not fall in the above three categories. 

When one successfully declutters one's outside world, one finds to one's amazement that one's superfluous desires, commitments also start disappearing. 

One then has sufficient time to introspect, to reflect on the real purpose of life, to make life more meaningful. 

Believe me, fullness comes only when one is empty inside!

~ Sanjay Gargish ~