As told by our scriptures, the root cause of all sufferings and unhappiness is desire. We all are under the constant influence of ‘maya’, which keeps us ever wanting to acquire possessions and pleasures. More often, people get into unrealistic expectations from themselves and end up experiencing sorrow and grief.

There are only two types of people you will ever get to meet. Type one is the ones who are happy in life, and the other type is the ones who are unhappy. Which category of people you have met more often to date? I am sure you would say the type two ones. These are those who have broken dreams, unactualized wishes, and many sad stories as their life experience.

Let us understand what happens when these two types of people meet one another.

Situation I: A happy person meets another happy person

Situation II: An unhappy person meets yet another unhappy person.

Situation III: A happy person meets an unhappy one

In the first case, when a happy person meets another happy soul, it creates ultimate bliss. This is a utopian circumstance. Although the probability of such a coincidence is usually low, it can happen. When two (or more) happy people meet, they exchange and spread positive vibrations in the ecosystem. This directly impacts the quality of their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Such a gathering leads to a quantum leap in people’s happiness index, thereby allowing much more actualization of dreams seamlessly! The reason for the above is a secret that most of us are unaware of the fact that your dreams get manifested only when you are in a happy state of mind. Sorrowful and sad/depressed people can never attract manifestation.

Let us now understand what happens when an unhappy person meets another unhappy individual. As you may have guessed it right – this is a perfect recipe for disaster. When two negatives come together, they can only amplify the devastating frequency of mental sickness.

You would have seen some families or groups constantly under the attack of gloom. When you interact with such people, you feel that nothing in this universe is going right. It would seem like your birth on this planet was only meant to feed you with hard work and difficulties. Two or more unhappy people coming together can only create chaos in their society.

Situation III is the most intriguing of all. What would happen when a happy person meets an unhappy one?

It all depends on the intensity of emotions carried by both of them. Invariably, negativity seeps into the mind faster than happiness. In the most likely hood, the unhappy person may not go well with the other one. There could be a clash of opinions. Peaceful coexistence would be challenging for such people. Only when the mental strength of the happy person is dominant, one may get a positive outcome from such a meeting.

When a happy and an unhappy person come together, it is a real challenge for the happy unit to stay committed to happiness. I remember the situation of Laddu Pinto. For some reason, his wife was strongly negative and unhappy about a specific life experience. Every time Laddu used to have a conversation on that subject, unhappiness used to rule the emotional time-space of the family.

However, Laddu was firmly convinced about the concept of happiness. He believed that life is supposed to be happy every moment, irrespective of any external situation. Initially, Laddu made efforts to enforce happiness on the unhappy counterpart, but that did not yield a positive result. Eventually, Laddu practised the art of ‘responsive ignorance’. He would respond with a nod to the spread of unhappiness but stay indifferent to the feelings out of it. This helped him to shield his state of happiness and positivity. Eventually, after some time, he could see a phased dissolution of the unhappy elements in the other half.

Friends, as is evident, situation number three rules the world and creates a lot of emotional tsunamis. As responsible human beings, we can strive to avoid being the force of negativity and unhappiness. Let us resolve not to be a party to situation number two. Rather be the happy force in every circumstance and spread joy amongst friends and family. Let us all infuse an undeletable dose of happiness within and create a happy society to live in.

Do contact me in case you have any career queries.

Dr. Ajit Varwandkar is the Director of myaglakadam.com. He is a leading career counsellor and can be contacted on 9826132972 or email him at info@fsindia.in

This column was originally published by the author in The Times of India