Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Secret To Happiness Is Connection

By Masami Sato

What is the reason for our remaining alive? For what have we come here? Day after day we are being asked about the sense and purpose of our lives. And many of us keep on searching for answers. Will we be able to achieve happiness? That is also a question that forces us every day to find out its answer. What happens if the answer to those queries is quite uncomplicated? What if it is all about ONE thing? Bonding. The secret of happiness is explained perfectly in the stimulating voice of Masami Sato in the excerpt of her book, ONE.

What are we trying to find out?

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 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.

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?"

At first, it looked as if people were in search of different things, as they gave casual answers like "A nice partner", "Good job", "My own house", "A loving family", "A perfect mate", "More money", "Financial Freedom", "Peace of mind", or "Meaning of life". There were other similar answers as well.

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 we take off the temporal desires from the list and look only at the permanent desires, it is clear that all we want is to continue experiencing positive feelings like exhilaration, enjoyment, encouragement, motivation, kindness, love, happiness etc. - in another way, we want to remain 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.

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 bonding.

Relationship is everything

Everything depends on bonding. All things are part of some other things. A look at our own lives would say it all. Then we will begin to see the real purpose of 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.

All that we do is done to satisfy the need for that bonding. If we have no bonds with our own body, we do not even need to sleep or eat. Our bonds to all our senses tell us to do certain things to satisfy the demands that the body makes. If we disregard these pleas of our body, we feel pain and discomfort. And over and above our basic needs, we search for a bonding of a loftier type - the bonding to our existence - the bonding to our purpose. And without those bonds, it is just bare. Just like the barrenness many of us feel within when we have no bonds even to ourselves. It is just not the right way we are supposed to live our lives.

Bonds are powerful, and yet they are 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 we feel disconnected

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.

Relationship: the Secret to Happiness

What if we are looking at the whole idea from the other end? When we do it, we realize this simple reality: we cannot feel miserable when the bonds are strong. It is just not possible!

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.

Bonding: Our Life

Relationship is the core of everything. That is what life is. Relationship.

Things are just a combination of smaller parts. Things connect together to form a greater whole; the way our bodies are collections of smaller units, cells, organs, molecules and atoms.

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.

Connection and Religion

Some of us choose to be part of different religions to feel more connected. The connection they seek could be to God. It could be to the people with the same belief. When we share the same belief, it creates a stronger sense of bonding within that group of people. More giving happens naturally among people who are feeling connected to each other.

Bonding and Business

Many people start businesses to feel more connected to themselves by being in charge of their own destiny. But often in the business world, we end up feeling more and more isolated especially when we start perceiving other businesses as competitors, staff as tools and customers as a money stream. But the fundamental point of why we got into business was to feel connected. So, why do we need to create any isolation at all? Maybe in the ideal world, all the businesses worked differently, but together.

Relationship and Wars

Some of us even raise arguments or wars to feel some sense of 'triumph' or what is a heightened sense of safety and importance. But strangely, this ricochets. The minute we 'win' the fight, we are in fact weakening the relationship. We now require more sureness to defend ourselves from being assaulted by others. We thus end up being more unsure and frightened. We cannot take it lightly as it really happens to almost all of us in one form or another.

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.

No matter how differently we express our needs, everything we do is to fulfil the mere desire we have to feel and be connected.

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 a sport. We feel things and do things in a grand game but in reality the aim of any game is the pleasure we get out of it. It is not about doing something or having something. When the sports finally end, the winners are only the ones who have derived pleasure from the game. Not the ones who had more at the final tally. The upshots and end results of the sports in which we participate do not affect our actual life. But if we lost all our friends to participate in a game just because we wanted to win in that round, would it lead us to a lasting victory?

It is so easy to understand this in the example of playing a game, but we often become blind in our own everyday game called life. We forget so easily that it is also just a game.

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 this game called life, the aim of the game is to 'connect'. We can keep connecting until we all become one. It is the only way to continuously feel connected to our purpose-sense of happiness and joy. We cannot feel disconnected to anything or deny and judge even one thing if we are to achieve the state of total connection.

Life is as easy as that. There is only ONE secret.

And the secret is to connect.

To become ONE.

To find pleasure. - 16892

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