We live our lives searching for happiness, trying to collect wealth, family, name/fame, thinking that it will make us happy. While, some of the things do make us happy, like first job, child birth, family time, good food, travel, etc, but for some reason that happiness does not last, and we are back to where we started “Searching for happiness”.
Like a good student, we think that we lacked effort and that’s why the happiness didn’t last, so we put double the effort and expect to find happiness that will last forever.. But again the same thing happens, we get few moments of happiness and it’s gone.
We repeat this over-and-over for whole life, promising ourselves that one day we will have that elusive everlasting-happiness. But that never comes.
We search for this everlasting happiness everywhere, in every corner of our life, we don’t leave any stone unturned, except one place…. “Inside our own selves”, and by the way, that is where the true happiness lies.
We don’t need anything from outside to be happy, happiness is our true nature. It’s just that, we spend whole life trying to judge ourselves from the eyes of others and forget who we really are.
तत् त्वम् असि means, YOU, YOURSELF are that happiness you are looking for. We are made of same divine thing as that of the force of nature, some call god, we just need to realize who-we-are.
While money and other things are very important, as they help us sustain the life, but they are not “the life”. Earn money as much as you want through legal means, as that is one of purushartha (things to aspire for), but don’t make that as goal of your life. All the Best!
तत् त्वम् असि, is one of the four mahavakyas of Vedic literature, and is taken from Chandogya Upanishad.
Vedanta 