The Pursuit of Happiness

A few months ago, someone I love and respect said, “you just don’t seem like a happy person.” In the aftermath, those words continue to echo in the vast space between my ears. The words roll around like sneakers in a dryer, consistently thumping my attention. Over time, my YouTube search for things like “Physics and Ultimate Meaning” and “Why is There Something Rather than Nothing?” way out there began to turn inward as I sought an answer to the more pressing question, “Am I Les Miserables?”

I’ve discovered there’s much scientific study behind happiness, and even a Cal-Berkeley edX course on the Science of Happiness I’m taking. I’ve also learned how meditation can physically alter your brain in positive ways! Oh, side note: Yoga was developed some 2,500 years ago as a way to warm up and prepare the body for meditation…

With all this discovery has come some actual practice. I can recommend two podcasts that I now begin each day with. First I spend 10-15 minutes with Mary Mechley’s Daily Meditation Podcast, followed by another 10 minutes or so with Dr. Robert Puff’s Happiness Podcast. I think how each end their podcast says a great deal about how to be happy:

“You are so worth slowing down for.” – Mary Mechley

“Accept what is. Love what is.” – Dr. Robert Puff

Speaking of meditation, Buddhist monks spend quite a bit of time practicing it and their positive results are indisputable. Monk Matthieu Ricard is sometimes called the “happiest man in the world.” Check out his 20 minute Ted Talk. Here’s a little sample of his insight to true happiness:

“So how do we proceed in our quest for happiness? Very often, we look outside. We think that if we could gather this and that, all the conditions, something that we say, “Everything to be happy — to have everything to be happy.” That very sentence already reveals the doom, destruction of happiness. To have everything. If we miss something, it collapses.”