The Secret of Happiness Is Relationship
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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 searching for?
There are a host of things that we do in our lives.
However, have we ever wondered why we do what we do? What are we actually looking for?
The world is a confluence of millions of people of all continents, races, religions, and ideologies, doing different things. They look different and also act in different ways. All of us have different interests and each have a different viewpoint. We converse differently using different languages. We have different emotions and desires.
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
Happiness is one state of emotion that we are all longing to be in. We all may define it differently. We may value it differently. We may experience it at different levels of intensity. But we surely have something in common when happiness comes to us. And when we discover this secret about happiness, we hold the power to be happier, and to make others around us experience the same feeling too.
The life that we are living is a mystery. We all may love it in one way or another. We may also disapprove of it in different ways. We may ask questions about it. We may value it immensely. Or we may just have it, in a nonchalant manner. But what exactly is the purpose of our life? What if the very truth of our existence is about to be revealed? What if this truth really brings us happiness and satisfaction when we discover it?
What if the truth of our life’s purpose, and of its happiness, is as simple as this:
It is all about relationship.
Bonding 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 at all, in life as human beings?
It is simply because we want to connect more and more. We make friends to feel connected. We get married to connect with someone more deeply and more permanently. We create a family to feel even more connected. We go out to meet more people to connect with, not only to get practical benefits from those connections, but also to feel 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.
Bonds are powerful, and yet they are fragile and tender
When we cannot feel the intimacy in a relationship, we opt for separation, divorce, quarrels, judgement, and disapproval. It never feels good to lose the intimacy in a relationship. Nevertheless, it is possible to fall in love with someone one day and fall out of love with the same person the next day. The feeling can alter just by a flick of a finger. And the flick might be by your finger 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.
Connection: the Secret to Happiness
What if we choose to perceive the entire thing in reverse? When we do that we understand this simple truth: we cannot feel despondent when we are in a strong relationship. It is simply not possible!
Try to feel unhappy when we’re feeling connected to the people around us and laughing and sharing wholeheartedly together. Even when we have so-called ‘problems’ in life, we can still laugh together and feel happy and positive when we are feeling connected. At the same time, it is very difficult to enjoy anything if we’re not feeling connected.
Bonding: Our Life
Connection is the core of everything. That’s what life is. Connection.
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 the choices we make are the manifestations of our need for bonding. We are designed to persistently search ways to bond to each other and to a larger rationale.
Relationship and Religion
Some of us have opted to become a part of different religious systems to feel better related to each other. The relationship that we yearn to build could be to God. It could be to those who share the same belief system. When there is the sharing of a similar conviction, there is a stronger relationship within that group. More bestowing on each other takes place among people who feel related to each other.
Relationship 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.
Bonding and Wars
Some of us even create arguments or wars to experience some sense of ‘victory’ or supposedly a greater sense of security and significance. But ironically, this rebounds. The moment we ‘win’ the battle, we are actually more disconnected from others. We now need more security to protect ourselves from being attacked by others. We somehow end up being more insecure and afraid. We can’t laugh at this because it actually happens to almost every one of us in different ways.
It may be the differences of opinion we have with people around us. It may be the wrong conclusions we reach at when we decide another person is wrong. When we want to be the only person to triumph, it will not be a victory in the true sense of the word - there would be no bonding. We can only rejoice when we succeed in unison. Then we feel the strong bond.
Despite the varied ways in which our needs are expressed, everything we do is to satisfy the yearning we have to feel and have a strong relationship.
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 just like a game. We experience things and do things in a game but fundamentally, the aim of any game is to enjoy. It is not about doing things or having things. When the game finally ends, the winners are only the ones who enjoyed the game. Not the ones who had more at the end. The results and outcomes of a game we play don’t affect our true life. But if we lost all our friends to play with during a game just because we wanted to be the winner in this round, would it lead us to the real winning game?
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 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 this play called life, the aim of the play is to ‘bond.’ We can keep bonding until we all merge to become one. It is the one way to perpetually feel bonded to our rationale - the feeling of joy and pleasure. We cannot afford to have the bonds to anything weakened or reject and decide even one thing if we are to reach the state of complete bonding.
Life is as easy as that. There is only ONE secret.
And the secret is to connect.
To grow into ONE
To enjoy.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing. This article, The Secret Of Happiness Is Relationship is released under a creative commons attribution licence.
