A while back I read the Dalai Lama’s ‘The Art of Happiness’, where the purpose of human life is defined by seeking happiness. At first, I must admit I found this idea puzzling – how could one live a life purely motivated by furthering their own happiness? Wouldn’t you eventually tire of continually pursuing pleasure? It seemed a terribly selfish concept and somewhat confusing coming from one of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders. However, I read on and discovered that the Dalai Lama makes an important distinction between happiness and pleasure – “True happiness relates more to the mind and heart. Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable, one day it’s there, the next day it may not be”. So to be specific, pursuing something that will give us a lasting sense of happiness and achievement will lead to far greater contentment than an act geared towards giving us some sense of pleasure that may be fleeting and meaningless. Simple right? Well, it certainly made me stop and question things. What truly made me happy? What truly feeds the mind and heart? And the answer was this: so many things. My friends, my family, my dog, travelling, food (eating it and cooking it), reading, writing, swimming, adventures, the random silliness in day to day life – just to name a few. Since then I’ve found, the more I look for things that make me happy, the more I seem to find. So I’ve decided to start this blog to track some of my happiness pursuits in the hope that they might make a few more people smile too. I figure, we only get one life – let’s make it a happy one.
Be the happy. 