No, it doesn’t take a lot to make someone happy. Sometimes even a wayward glance will do the trick. Or possibly just a short call for no other reason than to say “Hi there!”
Then why is it that we don’t do it often enough?
I have a theory: If we always did it, we’d take all the surprise away from it. Much of the happiness comes from the unexpectedness. The thought: “I can’t believe he did that. He never does that. I feel so special!” does not happen otherwise. If emotions and feelings become banal, then they lose their impact; they are just there, unfelt.
Of course, all of this seems rather obvious. The non-obvious bit is this: When, why and how does one decide to act unexpected and make someone happy? Some enlightened souls follow a basic principle in life: they will make at least one person happy every day. But I wonder if that provides the same satisfaction and pleasure as making someone happy just once-in-a-while.
It is not altogether incorrect when Agent Smith explains to Morpheus in The Matrix:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.
Think of it the other way round.
If you do it often enough, people expect it. And then one day you forget to do it, people think you are rude.
Comment by Sagar Yerunkar — March 1, 2010 @ 11:28 pm