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 looking for?
There are so many things that we carry out in our lives.
But have we ever thought about why we do what we do? What are we really looking for?
The world throngs with millions of people of all races, religions, and belief systems, doing myriad things. People look different from each other and behave differently. We have widely varying interests and outlook on life. We communicate in different ways, because we use different languages. We have different hopes and emotions.
Nevertheless, if there was ONE thing that ALL of us are searching for, what could that 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?”
In the beginning it appeared that different people were looking for different things. People said different things like “A house of my own”, “A good job”, “A perfect partner”, “A soul mate”, “A little more money”, “An affectionate family”, “Freedom”, “Peace of mind”, “A purpose to life” etc. There were many answers of this type.
I did notice that some of these requirements were of a more earthly nature while others were of a permanent nature. Earthly desires are those that we want because we do not yet have it, or think that we do not yet have it. As against this, permanent desires are not about getting things we do not have. It is about a ‘feeling’ that we yearn for, so that it does not come to an end, whatever we get or accomplish at every moment or our lives.
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.
Contentment
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.
Life is a mystery we are all living in. We all may love it in our own special ways. We may despise it in different ways. We may question it. We may treasure it. Or we may just have it, accept it, indifferently. But what is the purpose of our lives? What if the secret of our existence is so near? What if the secret actually brings us happiness and contentment when we discover it?
What if the essence of the aim of our lives, and its joys, is as simple as this:
It is all about relationship.
Connection 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 anything, ANYTHING at all, in life as humans?
It is just because we want to connect to others. We make friends to build a relationship. We get married to establish a relationship in a deeper and more permanent manner. We create a family to further strengthen that relationship. We go out to meet more people to connect with them, not only to get benefits out of those relationships, but also to become more connected to the world.
We get ourselves good clothes or go to a beauty parlour to bond better with our physical appearance or aesthetical sense. We choose to try out different types of food to bond better with our sense of savour and aroma. We dine out to get on better with people we would be sharing the meal with. We buy mobiles and computers to bond better with the entire world and its people. We read books and newspapers to remain connected to what is happening around and what others are going through. We study things and learn things to bond better with knowledge that others value.
Every single thing we do is to satisfy the need for connection. If we’re not connected to our own body, we don’t even have to eat and sleep. Our connection to all our senses tells us to do something to satisfy the demand of the body. We feel pain and discomfort if we ignore the signals of our own body. And beyond our basic needs, we seek a greater sense of connection – connection to our existence – connection to our purpose. And without that connection, it’s empty. Just like the emptiness many of us feel inside when we’re not even connected to ourselves. That simply cannot be the natural way we’re designed to live our lives.
Connection is powerful, and yet it’s fragile and tender
When the bonds in a relationship lose strength, we go in for a separation, divorce, disagreements, judgement, and bitterness. It never feels good to lose the bonding. Still, it possible to be in love with someone today, and totally disconnected and bitter towards him tomorrow. And this change of feelings can happen just by the flicker of an eyelid. And the eyes might be yours or theirs!
When the relationship is not there.
When we do not feel the connection, we start seeing problems. We start seeing differences and barriers. We start judging and criticising others. We magnify, dwell on and give energy to those things we perceive as problems. When that happens, we could even turn it all inwards and give ourselves pain and criticism. We cannot feel totally happy when we’re feeling disconnected from even one thing.
Bonding: 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 moody when we feel the security of our bonding to the people around us and laughing and enjoying with our whole heart. Even if we have our own fair share of difficulties in life, we would still be able to break into a laugh and enjoy and feel good when the bonds are strong. At the same time, we would be unable to enjoy things when those bonds are absent.
Connection: Our Life
Relationship is the core of everything. That is what life is. Relationship.
Everything is a mere collection of smaller parts. Everything connects together to form a greater unit; like our bodies are collections of smaller parts, organs, cells, atoms and molecules.
Our actions and choices also express the need for connection. We are designed to constantly seek ways to connect to each other and to a greater purpose.
Bonding 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 may be the arguments we have with people around us. It may be the negative judgement we make when we feel something or someone is wrong. When we try to be the only one to win, we can never win in the real way-we feel disconnected. We can only truly celebrate the victory with others when we win together. Then we feel connected.
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 comprehend this when compared to acting in a play, but we often fail to understand it while enacting the play of life. We do not remember that life is also a play.
We have no idea when this game began and when it would be over, all that we know is that it commenced in the past and that it will be over one day. When finally the umpire blows the whistle to stop the game, we can simply say, “Wow, it was a lot of fun. Let us play 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 uncomplicated as that. There is just ONE secret.
And the secret is to establish a relationship.
To grow into ONE
To relish.
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