Be The Plus

As a young man growing up in the West, I felt I was conditioned to live a certain way without really questioning it. To be successful at this thing called ‘Being Human’, I thought it should involve getting good grades, getting a good job, earning money to buy the right products, then one day starting a family and so on. At first, I didn’t question it.

That all changed in W. H. Smith bookstore in Brent Cross Shopping Centre in 1998. Some strange combination of forces propelled me to pick up a book called “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama and Howard C Cutler. I started to read.

Immediately I was struck by the clarity, simplicity and purity of the message.

“The purpose of life is to be happy.”

Sadly, at 17 years old I was very cynical. I felt uncomfortable with the message. In a world with so much suffering, wouldn’t it be incredible selfish for me to expect to be happy?

The authors saw that line of argument coming and quickly dispelled it. Miserable people are negative, antagonistic and gloomy; they drain the spirit of the people around them. By contrast, happy people are joyful, uplifting and inspiring; they have a positive effect on others. Therefore it is not selfish to seek happiness, but the exact opposite is true!

Right, I was hooked and I wanted to find out more.

It sounded so obvious so far. So why isn’t everyone happy? Why is it so hard to be happy? Why isn’t that the default state?

One key reason why is because we are confused about what ‘happiness’ really means. It can means different things to different people in different contexts. The word itself is a ‘false friend’; we think we understand what it means, so we stop exploring what it could mean. In the West, there is a tendency to equate happiness with acquiring more possessions. Yet that feeling is fleeting, unfulfilling and expensive to maintain. True happiness is cheap, readily available and long-lasting.

Furthermore, we sometimes dismiss happiness because “ignorance is bliss”. We might have the impression that happiness is naïve and foolish. While that can be true in some cases, we must not tar all forms of happiness with the same brush. There is another form of happiness that can be cultivated through wisdom; that is the one we should seek.

So, the bad news is that people are not happy. But the good news is that we can choose to be happy and we can live our lives in a way that cultivates this true form of happiness. We can train our minds to get better at being happy. A blueprint has been created to help us to live our lives in a way that is truly, authentically happy.

Since that fateful day at W. H. Smith bookstore, I’ve been exploring that blueprint and I’m excited to write about it in the coming days. I hope it can make your life happier and more beautiful too.