Happiness, Inside Out
January 25, 2007 | 4:19 pmFirst, some basic info. The ten days camp was to a village called Kosappur, some 30 odd kilometers from my house. I was actually quite surprised that there were places this rural so close to where I am staying. The place isn’t even locateable on Google, Yahoo! or Live maps. It’s a one and a half hour bike ride from my house, and there is a single bus to the place, which commutes 4 times a day. We stayed in a farm that houses some 400 animals of various sizes and shapes. I’ll post about what we did there later. This post is about what I learnt from this.
Happy Leprosy Patient Hosted on ZooomrOne day, we paid a surprise(to us) visit to the nearby Pope John’s Garden, a home for people suffering from Leprosy. This guy is an inmate at Pope John’s Garden. He was the one who recieved us from the van and showed us around. He was practically with us the entire stay. Me pointing the cam at him bought out this smile.
He’s Happy.
How could he be? He’s got every friggin reason in the world to be sad. Disfiguring dreadful skin disease? Check. No Money? Check. No Luxuries(There’s not even a TV in the whole place)? Check. No path/goal for the future? Check. No support from family? Check.
But, he’s still friggin happy.
How? Happiness is within. He’s realized that he can stil be happy without any external dependencies. He could be happy, statically linked, without any external dependencies(which might lead to DLL Hell), standalone, just like in the good ol’ DOS days. That, is what he taught me. Happiness is within. If he can be happy with all his problems, then where on the scale does a powercut or slow internet connection lay?
And, just being with him made me happy. The knowledge that I bought out that smile made me happy. When I visited him, I made him happy. When I made him happy, I felt happy. That brings me to the next point, that Happiness is outside. The fact that I made someone else happy made me happy. By a small act of visiting him, I made him happy, which made me happy.
If there is anything that this camp thought me, then this be it: Happiness is inside, and outside. You are more happy when you make someone else happy.
I don’t even know the name of that guy, but he’s probably changed my view of life, broadened my horizons. Thanks dude!
More photos coming soon. You can check them out here, or subscribe to the RSS feed here.
Analysis of Wikipedia coming soon!
And, thanks to all the people who have encouraged me by posting about me, and another special thanks to all those who helped me buy the cam(especially Rob). Thanks!
And I am considering merging my Zooomr feed with my main feed. Any thoughts?
That's really touching, Yuvi. It's amazing how much we take for
Hamish M | January 25, 2007 | 5:26 pmThat’s really touching, Yuvi.
It’s amazing how much we take for granted — we are so lucky, but we still find time to complain that ‘life is hard’. I’m guilty of this myself (I’m sure we all are), but seeing things like this really puts it into perspective.
As for merging your feeds, it sounds like a good idea to me, so I say go for it
Yuvi, That was a really good post ! I dont know
Anando | January 25, 2007 | 11:05 pmYuvi,
That was a really good post ! I dont know about others, but that was very insightful for me and it did make me realize, once again, that happiness comes from within and not from external materialistic objects. Thanks again.
Yuvi - I'm very pleased that you are making good
Rob La Gesse | January 28, 2007 | 1:31 amYuvi - I’m very pleased that you are making good use of your camera, and I am especially pleased that you seem to be trying to focus on showing everyone your world - that’s what a camera and the Internet are here for - so we can all learn more about one another. Perhaps them we’ll e less reluctant to kill each other.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Rob
I've been to a couple of Leprosy hospitals in India
PeterP | February 12, 2007 | 3:51 pmI’ve been to a couple of Leprosy hospitals in India and you’re right, some of the people there had found the source of true happiness….
Amazingly humbling.
[...] Happy Birthday to me! I know this comes some
StatBot visits The Old New Thing » YuviSense: Kid in Tech | February 16, 2007 | 2:21 am[…] Happy Birthday to me! I know this comes some 6 days late, but then, I’m lazy and been somewhat sick, so sorry for the delay. This year has been fantastic for me, with me moving to my own hosting space, interviewing Sriram Krishnan and finally deciding my goal in life is to work at Microsoft, this blog getting famous, me making a lot of friends,me buying a camm, and a camp that’s changed my life. Thanks life, and thanks to all the people who’ve made this possible. […]