BackChasing happiness
Chasing happiness
Premium
Recent research has shown, again and again, that most of us have a certain “happiness threshold", beyond which it’s hard for us to go. Certain people seem as averse to optimism as others of us are unaware of the meaning of despair. Yet where we stand, when it comes to our happiness, is less like our height than like our muscles; we can work on it, train ourselves (as we train at the gym) and learn how better to realize our potential. Not everyone can become an Arnold Schwarzenegger (or a Dalai Lama), but most of us can learn to be happier and healthier than we are, so long as we enjoy basic freedoms and food and shelter.
Also Read Things that make me smile
I’m not the person to speak on this subject—just another blundering journalist—and I could fill this column with the wisdom of my betters, from Aristotle to Woody Allen. But what I’ve found in my own life is that happiness has come most reliably when I haven’t been looking or hoping for things that don’t really sustain me deep down. In my mid-20s I was a young writer with a job at Time magazine in midtown Manhattan, an apartment (officially) on Park Avenue, freedom to travel and write and, single, to do pretty much anything I pleased. But I could feel that something inward and profound was not being satisfied, and so I left for a monastery in Kyoto and now live in a two-room flat in the middle of rural Japan, with no car, no bicycle, no printer, no high-speed Internet, no television I can understand.
And the days seem to allow time to do everything and nothing, and I can’t think of a material thing I lack. Happiness really means just the freedom to pursue what is most essential in you while always recalling that happiness, peace and respect come only when they are not being pursued.
Pico Iyer’s most recent book was The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
Write to lounge@livemint.com
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
