How to stay happy when the world has forgotten how

 

Special Feature: A Long Free Verse on Living a Happy Life in the Modern World
Title: How to Stay Happy When the World Has Forgotten How
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

There is no golden age, no perfect decade,
no utopian past to crawl back to.
The world was always messy.
But now it is neon-lit chaos—
scrolling, buzzing, bleeding distraction,
a theatre of instant rage
and manufactured emptiness.

And yet—
we are told: Be happy.
Smile more.
Breathe.
Buy something.
Light a candle.
Download a meditation app.
Talk to your sadness like it’s a houseguest,
not a squatters' gang living rent-free in your ribcage.

This is not happiness.
This is performance.
And the audience is blind.

So what does it mean to live truly happy
when your phone cries more than your soul ever dares to?
When every opinion is a warfront,
every silence a suspicion,
and joy is filtered through algorithms?

Here’s what I know:
Happiness is now an act of rebellion.
A revolution inside the marrow.
It is refusing to outsource your peace
to the next gadget, app, guru, trend, or lover.

It is waking up and not reaching for the phone first.
It is pouring water slowly into a kettle
like it matters.
It is learning the names of trees,
talking to your plants,
hearing your own breath like it’s the first note of a forgotten song.

It is cooking your own food.
Tearing bread with someone who doesn’t want anything from you
but presence.
It is finding people who don't ask for your performance—
only your quiet, imperfect truth.

It is saying no to busyness
disguised as importance.
It is deleting what doesn’t serve you—
apps, toxic people, unearned guilt,
false urgency.
Not everything needs your response.
Not everything deserves your panic.

Happiness is not absence of pain—
it is walking with it.
A limp that becomes a rhythm.
A scar that becomes a map.
A wound that becomes a window.

It is knowing the world might burn
and still planting herbs.
Still writing poems.
Still laughing like fools
in candlelit kitchens
when the power goes out.

It is building a life that looks nothing like what others approve of
and everything like what you once dreamed
in the quiet hours
when no one was looking.

It is walking into the day
not armed with certainty
but surrendered to wonder.

It is not winning.
It is not owning.
It is not becoming more productive, more liked, more followed.

It is being.
Fully.
Weirdly.
Wildly.
Unapologetically.
Alive.

Why We Write Like This
We are Faraz Parvez, and this is not just a blog—it is a breath, a mirror, a rebellion in ink.
Every verse is a step toward the real, the raw, the remembered.
If this stirred something in you—
keep returning.
There are more words where this came from.
And more truths yet to be told.

farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Visit. Share. Reflect.
Because maybe, just maybe,
you’ll find your joy waiting between the lines.

—End

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