Sometimes happiness is just a mirrage…
By: Ankita Pathak
Tags: Happiness, Work Life Balance, Life Lessons, Money Mindset

We all have experience happiness, the feeling of being truly calm and compassionate about yourself. Well, this is the best phase of your life and we all want to be in that phase no matter what the situation. Happiness is the state of our life’s pendulum which we pass every now and then before starting on our next osccilation.

I was in a similar state since July, 2020. I would work all day long, count my earnings and declared myself to be successful. After quitting my job in March, 2020, I landed a good paying freelance job in May, 2020 and in July 2020 I also got a full time job. What more could one expect, my salary alost tripled, I had no expenses because I was staying at home (due to WFH) so all that I earned were my savings. My savings were more than my salary an year ago, so life was pretty good and as I called it happy.

Well, we all know of mirrage, the illusion, well as it turned out my happiness was also a mirrage, that I had created in my head. Having heard of jobs, money, savings all life long from everybody around, I felt I was successful and thus happy. The reality however was very different.

What shook me?

Just yesterday, I was working on my freelance work, and in two hours I completed their work and sent them the copy. What happened next came more as a shock to me, than an embarrassment The person tells me that all your work has been rejected because you completed it in just 2 hours. I did not know what to say, I told him to check the work instead of checking the timings, to which he replied, I don’t need to do that, I am not giving you any more work.

Well, this was extremely unexpected, because that same person had told me a day or two earlier that I was really good at my work and he trusted me with the work. Today he was telling me that he rejected my work because I completed it too soon. I basically was puncihsed for being effiecnet.

Now you may call it ego or self respect, but I decided to quote the as I did not want to work for someone, who valued time more than work. Anyways I did not want to argue and I left the situation as it is.

The next morning

Today morning, though it has;t been really long, but the same thoughts of what happened pondered over my mind, and I sat at my desk thinking what just happened and actually writing the pros and corns of it. To my surprise I had more pros than cons.

I realised today, how busy I had made myself due to that work, that I had stopped reading, writing, and even spending time with my family. I said I was happy because I probably did not have time to think what actually my emotions were.

I had actually started writing a book, which was very close to my heart, and after writing some 10 pages, I had just stopped because I did not have time for myself. I am a very self introspective person, but it had been really long since I had done it.

Today morning I sat for introspection and wrote all that I felt, and actually made a future plan for myself. This incident mademe realise that I had lost myself in this race for money and work. Maybe sometimes incidents like these are necessary so that we can get back to ourselves.

What Next

Well, the future now looks good (not happy), I have made some plans which include:

Reading Books

Learning something new each month

Writing answers on Medium every week.

Completing the book that I was writing.

Hopefully not make such stupid mistakes again.