this is the whole point

when i was young i was in search of happiness. i was trying to find what it takes to be happy.

on one hand i thought it would be external things such as financial freedom, friends, mental wellbeing etc.

i remember writing down that my life goal is to be happy. i was reading tony robbins and he was saying be happy no matter what. to my 15 year old self that sounded like i have to make sure nothing on the outside affects my inside. to give you an example of what that meant to me:

i broke up with my first girlfriend at the time after 2 years, and i told myself i won't let this make me unhappy, and so i just decided not to cry about it.

what is obvious now in retrospect is that this made me kind of suppress my emotions, which then led to me feeling less and less. i did achieve not being affected much by the external. however, that came at the cost of not being affected by the external — also in a positive way. and the funny thing is, the opposite of being affected is not happiness. it's not that suddenly inside you're feeling all good. weirdly, it seemed like the more disconnected i was from outside effects, the less happy i felt.

eventually i realized that — also thanks to a woman — and started to feel my emotions more again. the good, the bad and the ugly. i cried again for the first time in years, and i felt excitement and joy again. i also had less 'peace' you could say, i was more affected by things. interestingly, being able to feel my own emotions more again, i could feel other people's emotions more. i could empathize, and actually became really good at that, to the point where i could sense how people are feeling just based off the energy without them really showing anything.

so coming back to happiness. if being happy all the time, which would imply trying not to be sad, which as described above actually leads to less happiness, is not the answer, what is it? or rather, what's the right question to ask?

what 'goal' is one to pursue?

is it fulfillment?

is it pleasure?

is it connection?

as of now, i see it like this: there are 3 interconnected goals.

1. presence

the basis for everything. you cannot experience anything without presence. and the more present you are, the more you can experience.

imagine you are out with your friends, you are having a great time, but something from work or a conflict you had with your partner is on your mind. some amount of your attention will be on the internal mind chatter, memories, possible solutions, your emotions about the situation etc. — not with your friends. so even if it was a beautiful evening, you'll have actually only experienced a fraction of it.

and i think for many people that lever is really dialed down. most people have some distraction, most of the time (me included). what i have noticed over the last years is that the higher my presence got (through years of daily meditation, journaling and other practices), the more i can fully be in the moment, fully experiencing what is in front of me — and not the internals of my mind.

i would say meditation is the most important exercise to practice this. but it is also discipline to come back to the moment once you notice that you've drifted off and aren't fully listening to what your friend is saying. when you drift off into your own thoughts about what they just said — noticing that, and then willfully forcing yourself to come back to your friend's story.

2. letting yourself be touched

if we were to focus on presence alone, we might conclude that monks who just meditate the whole day, and with a lot of presence wipe the floors and water the plants, must be living fully. and maybe they are. but from my point of view, we are on this earth in the human experience to fully experience its beauty, its ugliness, everything.

and that means letting yourself be fully touched by the things going on around you. letting yourself feel the pain of a breakup fully. the pain about the wars in the world. the joy of being with your friends. the anxiety about what to do with your life and how to manage being an adult in this world.

i feel like sometimes there is a resistance to that, but actually this is the whole point. when feeling angry or sad or afraid or joyful about something, it sometimes feels like something is wrong, that i shouldn't be feeling that way, that i need to come back to a 'happy' state. but life is exactly about that experience.

i think this combined with presence — and with the ability to consciously experience these emotions and being at peace with that experience — is the point.

3. action

we talked a lot about experiencing and letting the outside come in fully. but i think there is also something about going from inside to outside. about shaping our surroundings.

we are interrelational. we all have the desire to create, to impact, to be useful.

so i think taking actions that are aligned with our values, and feeling like we impact the people around us in a way that is important, is also a big part of feeling 'happy' or 'fulfilled'.

honestly, that is easier said than done. our current system is somewhat misleading us in what is really useful, and it's hard to take action that feels truly aligned with one's values.

most of us have a job in a company that does something so that other people can consume it, make more money, or run their business. so many jobs and companies don't really create inherent value, they're just means to an end (money).

so this part requires some honesty with yourself. asking what you actually believe is worth doing, and slowly moving your time and energy in that direction. it doesn't have to be a dramatic switch. it can just be small adjustments, over and over, until your outside starts to match your inside.

so what's the point then

if i had to put it in one line: be fully here, let life touch you, and act from that place.

happiness comes and goes, like every other emotion. the goal isn't to chase it, or to engineer your life so it never leaves. the goal is to be present enough to actually experience whatever is happening, open enough to let it move you, and grounded enough to do something meaningful with it.

that's the whole point.