Happy forgetfulness

One tends to think of joy as an undiluted benefit. And, yes, when you are happily celebrating the last thing you want is someone disturbing the mood with cautions. But, then, is it not the nature of philosophers to keep disturbing you? Have you not felt that they exist for the sole purpose of raining over your parade? Can Tiru, then, be an exception?

So, yup. Tiru goes...

Irandha veguliyin theedhe sirandha uvagai magizhchiyir sorvu - Tirukkural

More destructive than excessive anger is the forgetfulness arising out of intoxicating joy - Loose Translation

So there! Excessive joy is more dangerous than excessive anger. Because of the forgetfulness that it can cause. And what forgetfulness, pray?

You know, when a major achievement is done, there are a lot of small things that still remain to be done, just to tie it off. The achievement itself may be the tough task, the thing that you may even have despaired of doing when you are engaged in the project. The smaller tasks may be dead easy; but they could well be very necessary and, if you forget to do them, it may cost you the whole project. (Like, say, finding a new drug molecule and forgetting to patent it.)

You may forget to appreciate the people who helped you to achieve the success that you are so joyous about now. THAT may not yield instant karma but it will come back to bite you. AND, if you make a habit of it, you will eventually be a much lesser success than you could have been. If not an outright failure.

You may forget the lessons you learned while you worked on it. Forget the missteps which would mean that you may repeat them the next time. Forget the areas where you stubbornly pushed your own views over others and were proved wrong, which means that you will not LEARN from your mistakes. Forget the fact that your success leaned on other people's expertise which could well lead to you ignoring their advice the next time. (The 'I am the success, so I'm always right' syndrome.) So, yes, there is a lot that you could forget.

Joy is a good thing and one needs to give in to it every now and then. But when joy intoxicates, when it wipes out of memory the things that you ought to remember...

A drunk is ONLY a drunk, be it alcohol or joy, when he refuses to recover his sobriety.