A Lone Walker: Journey with myself.

A Lone Walker: Journey with myself. 

As individuals we are always surrounded by visible and invisible companions. The visible companions comes to us in the form of friends, caretaker, colleagues and other living organism.
The invisible companions are the one who walks along with us, wherever we go they follow. These invisible companions are our thought, perception, idea, and belief which determines our personality. There is no dispute in the fact that our personality plays a major role in decisions which we make in our life. Therefore, a personality is what we are.



A large portion of our personality and response to the environment is based on the belief. Various elements are roped in the formation of belief such as past experience, nature of the individual, social influence from where the individual belongs and the family. There is chain reaction between each of these elements. 

One lone walker was walking down the street talking to himself. After a long time he found the time to dialogue with himself, which was ignored in the noise and disturbance of external world. He was in the dilemma of understanding himself as he was going to start a new innings as bread-winner from bread-eater for his family. He had seen his father struggling and working hard to earn the bread and respect to the family. Therefore, he was trying to look inside himself to figure out whether he will be able to do the same. At the same time, he was also concerned about his ability to do better than his father. A consideration was floating up and down in order to strike a balance of decisions and thoughts. 

He was trying to figure out the meaning of happiness in comparison to the definition conceived by society at large. Though he believed in the fact that happiness is individuals perspective but he was also knowing that society and social norms have the power to disturb the happiness of individual at the same time discourage the sadness of individual to make him happy. All these considerations were tossed with his invisible and silent companions, who had become visible and vocal at that point of time. 

His companions gave him various kind of thoughts and ideas in terms of evaluating the cues and converting into belief, which was conceptualized in the following manner.

There is a time to say goodbye to the old and ordinary and to take charge of life. Moving to a new way of thinking and search for happiness. His inner soul was defining happiness as success, whereas past experience was encountering that, where he had a success and happiness but momentarily. His inner soul was shaken and was not able to understand, whether success and happiness are permanent. Therefore, the thought started walking into the domain of searching the permanent happiness under the belief that happiness is not permanent. He realized that if the happiness is dependent on something, it cannot be permanent. He dowelled into the thought that how can it be possible to find happiness without depending on some desire or without attributing it to some achievement. Actually, it was his belief who was built over a period of time, which made him believe that happiness is dependent and to be searched outside. His inner soul tried to pull him out of this thought and brought him to a rationale of dialogue to reach the exact meaning of happiness for him. He realized that there was a kind of classical conditioning done since his childhood, where the parents were depending upon him to get the happiness. During childhood he heard his parents saying, “if you get good marks” or “If you perform an act in the right manner”, they will feel happy. He also realized that making parents happy is what contributes to his happiness. If the parents or the loved ones are not happy, he was not happy. Therefore, the repeated acts like this made him believe that happiness is depending on some achievement, or on an act which is performed in a right way.  

His inner soul gave him a jerk again to bring him back on the platter of discussion and forced him to find out what is happiness and where all it is dependent in his case. He remembered his first achievement of scoring a very good marks in secondary school examination. He was happy because he had performed the act in the right manner, which had resulted into the happiness of the parents and the loved one. He came back home and was greeted and treated nicely. His parents had purchased a new bike for him, which he was aspiring for a long time, he sat on the bike and was enjoying the ride when he got to know that his closest friend has failed in the same examination. Though he was sitting on the aspiring bike, though his parents were happy, he was not happy. Therefore, he realized that the bike was a consequence of the result he scored and also his parent’s happiness based on the results he scored. But then happiness was not there when he heard the sad news from his friend, which means happiness is never permanent if searched outside. 

He also remembered his father struggle to get the livelihood and comfort to the family. He was standing at the moment, where he had everything which ever was desired sometime before, but he was not happy as the desires has taken a large and big shape. He went blank for some time and realized that he is searching something which exist or not, he is not aware. He also realized that if the mind is in pain, physical and materialistic thing cannot give you happiness. 

The thought process was getting refined. The thoughts were moving towards understanding that physical comfort and emotional comfort are different. He may be having all kind of objects, financial freedom, but if he is not emotionally balanced and inclined towards being happy even when the physical comfort is not there, he can’t be happy permanently. 

The refined thought had come to a consideration that happiness is eternal and it is irrespective of external manipulations. Whenever some stimuli is exposed, it is he who responds or react. The external objects or stimuli remains constant. For instance, when he got the bike he created a thought process of “WOW”, which gave him happiness, but as soon as he heard the sad news, he responded in favour of the news and “WOW” was overlooked. Therefore the happiness is not external. 

He also realized that if the external factor has to create a thought of happiness, it should create the same in every individual, which does not happen. Each Individual will have a different thought on the same external stimuli. He realized that happiness is a journey which is an individual’s choice without depending upon somebody else to give the stimulus of happiness. 

A lone walker had come to the point of conclusion and belief. His belief changed, he realized a lot of new thoughts, which was hidden while he was busy with outside world. A new personality evolved while talking to himself. 

He was feeling relaxed and was finding different responses to the same stimulus in comparison to his own responses. He realized and also gave the message that situations are external but the response is a choice of individual. 

A different personality who was more positive, composed and knowledgeable evolved from the lone walker expressing the interest to walk alone and talk to the experts inside and take their opinion because they are pure. He also realized that once in a while we must make it a point to talk to our invisible inner experts for the advice such that we can be happy all along our journey and do not repeat the same conditioned knowledge on the generations to come. 

A happy mind is a happy family and a happy family is a happy society.