Imagine a world where everyone is happy. Is such a world possible or is it utopia which cannot be reached? Is it a chimerical objective?
Well, maybe it is. But, what stops us from dreaming?
Nothing.
So, let us dream about it-a world where everyone is happy. What would it take for a world where everyone is happy?
1. A happy childhood and adolescence
We like it or not, a lot of our thinking systems depend on our childhood. Most of us, besides a few become the kind of people we are taught to be in our schools, and in our homes while we are kids.
Our home environments, schools and colleges have a tremendous impact on the quality of our adult lives.
How do we do this?
Let us start with home environments. Parents need to talk to their kids. Kids are not puppets. If you want to have puppets, have puppets. Don’t have kids. Parents cannot be imposing their unfulfilled dreams on their kids. Kids are separate human beings with a system, talents and motivations of their own.
Talk to the kids
Parents need to talk to kids about them, about what the kids want. Parents need to be conscious of what it means to be happy. I mean, if you don’t know of happiness yourself, how would you help your kids find it?
There is so much pressure on the school and college life. In India alone, so many kids commit suicide in schools and colleges. There is a major lack of communication at every level, especially with the parents. If children cannot talk to their parents about their problems, there is no possibility of a happy childhood. The only way kids would talk to their parents is when they see trustworthy friends in them, who would listen to understand and help them.
Make educational institutions attuned to happiness
Besides the home environment, the school and the college environment needs to be attuned to happiness. I don’t know if it is now. I got out of school in 1999. It wasn’t then. What does that mean? That means that it should be okay not to do well in all subjects and to do well in subjects where the kid is talented. Each child should be an individual concoction and not a rat in a rat race which he/she is scheduled to join once they are out of the education system.
Life is not meant to be a rat race. Unfortunately, it has become that.
2. A happy adulthood
Now, adulthood is majority of our lives starting 20’s. Let us say for the purpose of discussion here that your childhood and adolescence were fucked up and so point number 1 doesn’t apply to your life. You are an adult now and you have no idea what happiness is all about.
What do we do now?
To start with, get conscious about happiness. You are missing out on the most important emotion of life. If you didn’t think about happiness through your childhood and adolescence because you did not have the right guidance, you are at the right place. I have made almost all mistakes a man can make on the journey to happiness.
So, you are an adult, and most likely, your education was a pain. You studied what was popular and found no joy in studies because you didn’t study what you may have enjoyed. You did not know why you should choose a particular set of subjects besides that everybody was doing so.
Where to start now?
Start figuring out now. You need to begin by listening to yourself and your emotions. Be brutally honest with yourself?
Do you feel miserable? If the answer is yes, tell yourself so.
Do you feel life is routine, boring and colorless? Tell yourself so.
Now that we have identified a problem, we need to go about figuring out how to fix it.
Admitting there is a problem of lack of joy is important because most people don’t do so. They are fine living a pretense because that’s what the larger society is doing-living a pretense.
Now that you have admitted that there is no joy, figure out for the first time in your life what brings you joy.
I know of guys who studied engineering for 6 years of their lives after the generic subjects were over and now they are writers or stand-up comedians or businessmen. They figured out, like you need to.
Do what brings you happiness
It will be a process. The first step to try and figure out what brings you happiness. What turns you on?
You may need to do a bunch of experiments and let go of certain things in the process. You may need to postpone your life by society’s standards a bit. But, if your happiness is important for you, you will do it.
I will be honest. It is fucking tough. The later you start in life on the search for your happiness, the more difficult it is. Your family, who had no clue about happiness through their own lives, will wonder what is wrong with you, and why you are suddenly behaving weird. Your friends will desert you and you may find yourself alone on your journey.
Well, so be it.
Either you will find your happiness or you won’t. If you decide to do it, you may need to stand and fight a lot of people who have never had the guts to go and find their happiness. Misery loves company and hates to see people leave the gang.
If you are up for it, go for it.
With whatever you are doing now, start dabbling in new stuff that you see yourself naturally drawn towards. Naturally is important, because you want to do something that comes naturally to you. That means you enjoy it, when you do it. You experience a new feeling that you haven’t felt all your life- joy!
There is a feeling of joy and you can’t stop yourself from doing that thing again and again. You want to make the time to do it. You find a way to do it more and more so you improve on it and hopefully, someday do it full time. Hell, you would pay for it if you had to.
When you do it and make a living off it, you will have realized happiness, professionally.
Once you have found happiness on one level of your level and you understand that love and passion are sources of happiness, you will go about to find it in other areas of life too- personal and social.
Conclusion
To summarize, what does the world need to be a happier place:
- Education for everyone so that we can all think for ourselves and figure out what puts us on fire
- A supportive family environment which understands and aids our core need for happiness
- Passionate work that doesn’t feel like work
This looks quite difficult as I write it, since a large percentage of the human population doesn’t have access to high quality education, especially in poor countries like India. That’s a prerequisite for personal growth and happiness. There is a long way to go before we achieve 100% literacy. Hopefully, the access to internet will solve that problem to some extent in the coming few decades.
Happiness is infectious
However, developed countries, where literacy is not an issue, can work on the vision for a world where everyone is happy. The great thing about happy people is that they want to see others happy as well. Happy people know that they can only be happy by making others happier.
The more happy people are there in the world, happiness will grow in geometric progression. Unfortunately, that’s not the case right now in spite of so much technological advancement that the human society has gone thorough.
One day, hopefully. I don’t know if that day is possible, but we can certainly hope for it.
Like the great movie, Shawshank Redemption said, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
I hope of a world where everyone is happy. Do you?
Thank you for reading.
The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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