#100happydays

by Meenu

#100happydays…

By now everyone would have seen this hashtag on all social networking sites – twitter, instagram, facebook and probably blogs too. For people who do not know much about this hashtag, this was started by 100happydays.com which wants to know “Can you stay happy for 100 days in a row ?” And to prove it, you have to post a pic everyday of the person/thing/event that makes you happy. The amusing thing for me was that 71% people failed this challenge saying they did not have time! Really? No reason to be happy is what I could imagine. But lack of time? Well, that made me happy for myself that very moment.

But please don’t be too eager to judge the millions who have taken up this challenge or to answer the question for yourself. Trust me, 20 days into this challenge I realized that there are days when even a flower can make you happy for hours and then there are days when everyone else will sing your blessings to you but you still want to sulk. There are as many reasons to be happy, as there are to be unhappy. Then why this challenge, my friends asked me. Some of my friends thought it’s quite a foolish thing to force yourself to be happy every day.

One of the guys put a status “happy without 100 days”. That’s great if some can be happy every day. But I feel this challenge is more about realizing that anything can make you happy and also to be thankful about it when you post the pic. I always knew reading makes me happy but in the last 3 weeks there have been days when I could post more than one causes of my smiles and none was related to books (and that always makes me ecstatic!).

What this challenge makes me do is to reflect on the day and filter all happy moments. It makes it a bit easy to focus on the bright things in my life. And personally I so much needed to learn that!  After all it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Maybe happiness can be made a habit too. Yet, to be happy is a simple resolution to make and as easy to break for many people.

Another friend said a very inspiring thing related to this challenge. As per him, the days you are not happy, looking at all the collected happy moments of past can make you smile for sure. You might have forgotten for a moment that happiness is a perfume that spreads to others too and not just stick to you.

Yesterday morning, I woke up in a not so happy mood though it was the day I was going home after two months. There were lot of questions and doubts in my head about myself. And then somewhere the conscious act of finding reasons or excuses to smile was triggered. Being one of the stubborn sort of people who cannot push away the sad thoughts, I am so much in love with the fact that something is making me seek happiness even when I cannot feel it. If the cynics want to call it forceful, so be it! I am too selfish to be happy, even if for the sake of a challenge.

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