The Secret Of Happiness Is Relationship
Why do we live? What are we here for? Day after day we asked these questions of the purpose and meaning of our lives. And most of us constantly look for the answer. How can we achieve happiness? This is yet another question urging us to look for its answer every day. What if the answer to those questions is simple? What if it is all simply about ONE thing? Connection. The secret of happiness is explained thoroughly in the clear and refreshing voice of Masami Sato in this excerpt of her book, ONE.
What are we searching for?
There are many things we do in our life.
However, have we ever wondered why we do what we do? What are we actually looking for?
The world now is full of billions of us coming from different races, countries, religions and beliefs all doing different things. We all look different and act quite differently. We have different interest and attitude from others. We communicate differently often using different languages. We have different desire and feelings.
However, if we were to say there is just ONE thing we are ALL looking for, what would it be?
While I travelled all over the world, I did ask people one simple question, “What would you like to achieve in your life? What do you really want?”
At first, it seemed everyone was looking for different things as they randomly said, “Good job”, “My own house”, “A nice partner”, “A loving family”, “A soul mate”, “More money”, “Wealth”. “Freedom”, “Peace of mind”, “A life purpose” There were many more answers.
I noticed that while some of these were temporal, and more related to day-to-day needs, others were of a more spiritual nature. We yearn for temporal desires because we do not as yet have it, or don’t feel that we have it yet. As different from this, spiritual desire is not about getting things we do not have. It is about a ‘feeling’ we look for, which does not end no matter what we manage to achieve at every moment of our life.
If one could just remove all earthly desires from our list and look at only permanent desires, it would be obvious that we just want to continue feeling positive sensations like excitement, happiness, inspiration, motivation, munificence, affection, joy etc. – put in other words, we want to continue being happy.
Happiness
Delightfulness is a state of emotion that every one us are longing to experience. Every one of us may define it in a different way. We may even evaluate it differently. We may sense it at varied levels of intensity. But without doubt, we have something in general when delightfulness comes to us. And when we understand this secret about delightfulness, we hold the knowledge to become more delighted, and to make others around us too feel the same sensations.
This life, that we live, is a mystery. All of us like it in our own different ways. We may also dislike it in different ways. We may wonder about it. We may cherish it. Or we may just accept it in an offhand manner. But what is the ultimate purpose of this life? What if the mystery of our existence is at hand? What if its revelation actually brings us happiness and fulfilment when we come face to face with it?
What if the essence of the aim of our lives, and its joys, is as simple as this:
It is all about relationship.
Relationship is everything
Everything is about connecting. Everything is part of everything else. If we look at our own life, it says it all. Then we will start to see the real purpose of our life.
Why do we do something, ANYTHING in life as human beings?
It is mainly because we want to bond more and more. We make fiends to feel bonded. We get married for bonding with another person in a firm and lasting manner. We raise a family to feel even more bonded. We go out and meet people to bond well with them, not only for getting advantages out of that bonding, but also to feel more bound to the world.
We buy nice clothes and go to a hairdresser to feel more connected to our sense of aesthetics and to our own physical beauty. We eat a variety of food to feel more connected to our sense of taste and smell. We dine out to feel connected to the people we share the meals with. We buy mobile phones and computers to connect with others and the world. We read newspapers and magazines to stay connected to what is happening and what others are doing and feeling. We study and learn to connect with what others know and value.
Every thing that we do is to satisfy the need of keeping alive relationships. It is our relationship to our own body that makes it imperative that we eat and sleep. Because of our relationship to our senses, we are asked to do things to satisfy the demands that body makes. If we ignore the demands that body makes, we have to bear the resultant aches and distress. And above our mundane needs, we yearn for another relationship – a relationship to our very existence – a relationship to our purpose. And without that connection, it is vacant. Just like the blankness so many of us feel when we have no relationship even to ourselves. That is just not the way our lives are supposed to be lived.
Bonds are powerful, and yet they are fragile and tender
When we can’t feel the sense of connection in a relationship, we go for separation, divorce, arguments, judgment and resentment. It never feels good to feel disconnected. But we could even feel in love with someone one day and feel totally remote and resentful toward that same person the next day. The feeling can change just by a flick of a finger. And it could be your finger or theirs!
When the relationship is not there.
When the bonds are not there, we perceive problems all over. We start seeing disparities and obstacles. We begin passing judgement on others and reproaching them. We blow up, focus on and strengthen those things that we perceive as problems. When that happens, we might even turn all that negativity inwards and cause ourselves hurt and injury. We cannot feel completely happy when we have severed the bonds with even just one thing.
Connection: the Secret to Happiness
What about if we looked at the whole concept in reverse? When we do that we discover this simple truth: we cannot feel unhappy when we are feeling totally connected. It’s impossible!
Try to feel grouchy when we have a good relationship with the people around us and smiling and sharing things completely. Even when we have ‘problems’ in life, we can still smile together and feel delighted when we are bound together in a good relationship. At the same time, it is hard to be happy if we do not have that edifying relationship.
Relationship: Our Life .
Connection is the core of everything. That’s what life is. Connection.
Everything is a unified whole of smaller units. Everything combines together to form a bigger unit; the way our bodies are a fusion of smaller entities like atoms, molecules, cells and organs.
Our acts and options also is an expression of the need for a relationship. We are meant to continuously find out ways to relate to each other and to a higher objective.
Relationship and Religion
Some of us opt to be part of various religions to feel better bonded. This bonding that they seek could be to God. It may be to the people with the same convictions. When we share a similar credence, there is a greater feeling of being bound to the people in that group. More awarding and handing over takes place among people who are feeling strong bonds with each other.
Relationship and Business
People start a business to feel a stronger relationship to themselves by having better mastery over their destiny. But quite often in the world of entrepreneurship, there is a greater sense of isolation especially when we start seeing other enterprises as rivals, staff as devices and customers as a source of income. With all that, the main reason for getting into the business was to establish a relationship. So why should we cause any secluding at all? Maybe in an ideal world, all enterprises worked in another way, but jointly.
Connection and Wars
Some of us even give rise to polemics or battles to enjoy a sense of ‘success’ or maybe a greater feeling of assurance and self-worth. But this only boomerangs. The moment we are ‘successful’ in the battle, we are really severing the bonds with others. We are now in need of more confidence to safeguard ourselves from being assailed by others. The result is that we become more vulnerable and frightened. We cannot treat this as a joke because it actually happens to each one of us in diverse ways.
It could be the disagreements we have with the people around us. It may be the wrong assessment we make when we feel that something or someone is not right. When we make an attempt to be the only one to succeed, we can never succeed in the real way – we feel not connected. We can really enjoy the success when we succeed along with others. Then we will feel the strength of the relationship.
Despite the myriad ways in which we communicate our wants, everything we do is to fulfil the longing we have to feel and have strong bonds.
The complete experience of relationship is only felt through our heart. We can build a relationship with anybody when we truly care for them, and feeling that association with them. If we know this, forming that needed state is not difficult, but just simple and amusing. Then we would really feel more pleasure and contentment.
Life is like a play. We act things and feel things in a play but actually, the aim of the play is to derive pleasure out of it. It is not about acting out things, doing things. When the curtain falls finally, the winners are the ones who have experienced joy by acting. Not the ones who received more applause in the end. The effects and upshots of a play in which we acted do not affect our real life. But if we lost all our life to act in a play just because we wanted to be the best actor there, would it make us the best actor of the play?
It is easy to make out this in the background of competing in sports, but we often do not realize it in the sports and games of real life. We forget so fast that life is also a form of sports.
We have no idea when the play started and when it would come to an end, we know that it began some day in the past and it will be finished some day. When the curtain falls on the stage of the play, we can just say, “Wow, it was really good. Let’s act in it once again!”
In the sports of life, the aim of the game is to establish a relationship. We can keep connecting until we all unite to become one. It is the one way to constantly feel the relationship to our objective – the feeling of pleasure and delight. We cannot feel detached from the relationship to anything or refuse and conclude even one thing if we are to achieve a lasting relationship.
Life is as simple as that. There is just ONE secret.
And the secret is to establish a relationship.
To turn into ONE
To enjoy.
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categories: contentment,business,relationship,connection,women,dating,happiness,BOGO
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Tags: BOGO, business, connection, contentment, Dating, happiness, relationship, women
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