Happiness — the matter of paramount importance!!

What makes you the happiest? Why would people want to trek, cycle, travel or swim? Wait… before you think this is going to be one of those weird articles wherein the fat chick talks about the redundancy of exercise in life, you could not be more wrong! Quite the contrary is happening here.  I want to understand why people would take up a physically strenuous activity to satisfy their soul.

I was rather intrigued by my friend and her husband who take the pain of cycling through the rough terrains (read Arunachal Pradesh, Leh and more such places) every year. It is most definitely not for work out purpose as they have separate daily work out sessions. So to satisfy my soul (which is reading) I went on researching about people who love to run or swim or trek just because they want to.

After copious amount of reading, I thought it would be best if I asked these friends of mine as to why they chose their poison (AKA favorite activity) over million other enterprises that could have been taken up.

Nisha Mathew

So my friend Nisha Mathew, a 36 year old freelance content & social media contributor from Bangalore says she is crazy about swimming and ‘it’ is one of her best friends! The funny part with her is it didn’t quite start out this way! She says, “I was scared witless of water and couldn’t swim to save my life, literally! I still remember back in 2004, on a trip to Wonderla, I managed to almost drown myself in a kiddie pool with a water depth of 3ft! It was this mortifying ‘near death – life flashing before my eyes’ (perhaps I exaggerate a little bit) moment that put me on the path to finding my passion – swimming!”

For her what started as a learning initiative of a basic survival skill slowly graduated to a sort of addiction. According to her, “To some swimming may be just a great sport, but to me, the pool has become my best friend and swimming a way of life. Everything feels and looks so different under water – like it is a completely different world down there! I can lose myself or just be me, feel free, get meditative, test one’s endurance and at the same time be relaxed. Under water, it does not matter if you are not at your best form, if people are watching, what you are wearing, blah blah… because it’s all about trying, and all you care about is getting to the other side of the pool, feeling alive and getting out with this huge almost goofy grin on your face! I read a quote somewhere, “Swimming is like a drug”! And, I agree. I hope the high never comes down. And in the words of The Great Dory – Let’s keep swimming… let’s keep swimming!”

Mitesh Bhuvad

Another friend of mine Mitesh Bhuvad, a photojournalist (PTI) from Mumbai is an avid cyclist. According to him, cycling helps him rid the stress and offers well being of his physical and mental state. He says that “I cycle to have a stress-free and healthy life. Because of my job I cannot commute on a bicycle but I make that up by riding to the outskirts of the city occasionally and going for a cycle touring expedition once a year.”

Shatrupa Ray

After these two, I decided to turn to my family for more answers. So I asked my cousin Shatrupa Ray, who is a PhD scholar from Varanasi. She had an interesting point to make. She believes that loving an art and living that art are completely different feelings. She says, “I love dancing but that is a different story. We all probably love dancing. Dancing and singing are perhaps the only activities deeply ingrained in human genome that express themselves spontaneously and occasionally. However dancing makes me listen to the truest voice of the inside “me”. The voice that surrounds me with an all-consuming echo saying, whatsoever may happen, life is beautiful and will remain so.”

Then I hounded my husband AC, a 42 year old photojournalist from Mumbai who loves travelling!  Although I wonder why I am never a part of his travel schedule. His reason for back breaking travel is simple. He says, “Innate desire to travel, to see and feel the unknown , to smell and taste , the curiosity to discover oneself is more than I can ask for against the physical pain which is nothing compared to the richness one gains.  An avid traveler loves the wanderlust where instincts for self-discovery overpower everything. I am driven by a feeling to escape the ordinary.”

So I guess it’s true; a heart wants what the heart wants. For me my heart wants to read. That gives me peace and keeps me sane. I now understand that the physical pain means nothing to these guys and maybe it is welcoming even as long as true happiness and satisfaction of the heart is met.