Take You Back

We tend to think of meditation as an answer to unanswered prayers, or a "magic cure for ills", which removes the results of negative past actions (negative karma). The surprising reality? Peace brings Peace. Happiness brings Happiness. But even creative hobbies and enjoying them, like the Arts of painting, poetry, and creating humour for yourself, and others at home and with friends, are ways to "Be Happy." It is not a play with words. The first step is to keep steady, and Learn to Be Happy, here and now. To enjoy, even for the time being, and create opportunities for Happiness to Live around us. A flowering plant needs water every day. No deep philosophy like that offered by 20th century philosopher Bertrand Russell (who wrote, "The Conquest of Happiness": happiness is not an empire or an army that needs to be "conquered"). Nor reading how a Roman Emperor, who himself lived a life of luxury, raves on about an essentially non-Roman (Greek) philosophy, Stoicism, and how that helps you to overcome things that bring you down. Most times, it does not happen; unless you are rich. Yet, like learning a language, learning "What Makes you Happy?" yet "Does not make others sad or feel bad" is the key. People urge, "develop emotional intelligence" or use Mindfulness (the correct way of training your mind is "Mind Watching", actually). Even Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence" (1995) seems to be saying some people are "born with a faculty to be happy." Or that it is a long and difficult process to overcome sadness or tragedy of circumstances. Don't absorb such words wholesale. The first step: Learn to Learn from Yourself. Learn what used to make you happy before, when our minds weren't preoccupied by excessive work hours, mobile phones, livestreaming, videos, or people in newsrooms of television studios slugging it out, like pugilists. Why let them hog your "free time"? You have No Time Left to enjoy Hobbies, or Social Time with family and friends (which should not mean just "having drinks together"). Instead of cultivating and enjoying plants and grass in your garden, sitting peacefully there, now you and family members harp on "Where Shall We Go This Summer?" Tourism today can make you unhappier still: the rush to catch the trains and airplanes; the crowds along the route, the traffic jams; the crowds at the destination; the steep costs of flights and rooms; the unsurety of security at destinations; and a growing sense of antagonism to tourists amongst tourism destination residents. This book, as a follow-up to a previous one, themed, "The Tourist: Poems à la Carte", is on How to Cultivate Happiness by enjoying what we all used to enjoy, foregoing the harassment, often felt in touring. To "Take You Back" (as the Frank Stallone song, in Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" films, goes). Going back, sometimes, matters more than "going" or "leaping" forward: as everyone wants to do that, now! Here are a few poems, a parting shot at how poetry in our life can "Take You Back."