It’s the journey that matters

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Sandra Bullock in an Alexander McQueen outfit

Just yesterday I wore an Alexander McQueen backless dress and felt beautiful in what was a most ingeniously created work of art. It must take a beautiful mind to have conjured up this concept and then constructed it. My mind began to ask what made this acclaimed creative genius, who was said to be worth twenty million pounds, commit suicide at 45 at his stunning two million pound flat in Mayfair in central London.

The designer was doing work he liked and achieved recognition, success, money, fame and adulation. He was one of the greatest creative geniuses of our times. Is that not enough reason to carry on living? Are there further barriers to the elusive state called happiness? One hint of what happened perhaps was, critics said, an obsession with the ‘Afterlife’ that came through in his work. Did he see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow on the other side of life?
The ostensible reason was that grief drove the fashion designer — high on cocaine — to slash his wrists with a ceremonial dagger on the eve of his mother Joyce's funeral. But then we tend to lose people even as our life goes on. From the day we are born life is a series of losses. What then is the way to grapple with pain, loss and suffering? I’d say the only way out is within. What comes to mind is a famous quote about happiness — ‘chasing happiness is like chasing a butterfly in a garden. Try to capture it and it evades you. Sit on a bench and close your eyes and it will come and rest on your shoulder’.
Psychiatrist McQueens said at the inquest that McQueen felt constantly let down by friends who he felt had exploited him in taking advantage of his fame. He had felt ‘let down’ by some long-term relationships. And then he was shattered by the loss of that one person whom he trusted — his mother.
This only highlights the point that the very elusive happiness does not come from relationships. Nor does it come even from material triumphs. One cannot be obsessive about money, house, friends and faithfulness from those friends, because these wants and expectations hinder peace of mind.
One can only do what comes one's way and try to be serenely absorbed in that. Remember Fountainhead’s Howard Roark? His greatest joy was the journey, his creations and his obsession with his perfection. Sorrow comes from resisting reality and from discontent. One has to flow with life and accept the let-downs as things that teach us lessons and learn to grow with the good and the not so good. That is the only way to equanimity. Sorrow is what we allow ourselves to reach in and wallow. Please let’s live life one day at a time. McQueen — I’d have said that because you can’t change people and you cannot change the past. People are what they are.
So then what is the route to happiness? I believe that there is no such thing as permanence in any state, not even happiness. But one can snatch happy times, learn to savour the moments and like Wordsworth so aptly put it: Stand and stare. Do we really ever stop to enjoy nature (whatever little of it we have left)? Greenery is a great healer, and walking barefoot in the grass is therapeutic as is hearing music one enjoys.
The good life is not a place you arrive at, it is a lens you bring to the place you are at right now! So snatch happiness and enjoy the journey. Because there is no destination at all, happy moments create a bank balance of fortitude and delight that you delve into when the going gets touch. It makes you into a survivor, not a quitter!