I could barely remember the days when life was not all about multitasking.  When one did things one at a time and if you wanted to do a lot of things, then it was a matter of doing things faster, more efficiently or simply finding the time in which to do them.  The form of multitasking in the good old days that I could think of, that is when time seemed to move a lot slower and there were certainly a lot less gadgets in my hand, on my lap and in my handbag, was when I read a book while eating my packet of crisps and sipping my cup of tea, or watching the television while vacuuming the carpet at the same time.

Happiness, they say, is a state of mind.   It is not what you have and it is not what you do.  It is how you feel as you are going through the motion of living.  But then, it is not like emotions either, that change when the sun shines or the rain pours, or even for absolutely no reason at all.  Rather it is a constant (like a background noise that ceases to have no sound because one ceases to listen to it) whose presence is noticeable only during its absence.  Indeed, it is often in moments of unhappiness do we realize how happy our lives have been!  In times of loss do we appreciate how much we actually own.

So, how do we achieve a happy state of mind then?  It is not, as we have said, in possessing.  But we do feel elevated in the anticipation of possessing something we’ve always wanted, do we not?  However, this pleasant sense of anticipation normally disappears very soon after we finally possess what we wanted.  So we move on to the next set of desirable object, not to delight in that object itself, but to fulfil that craving, to revel in the pleasure of the chase and the anticipation.  To get intoxicated in the anguish of being denied.

This anguish (the pain of the lover waiting for the beloved) however, must not be confused with happiness.  Though often it does make one feel that much more alive and gives one a sense of purpose.  That one’s life has a meaning, whether it is in accumulation of all sorts of material things, experiencing different situations and forming a variety of relationships.