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 trying to find out?
There are many things we do in our life.
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.
However, if we were to say there is just ONE thing we are ALL looking for, what would it be?
While I journeyed all over the world, I asked people a seemingly straightforward 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 we removed all the temporal desires from out list and only looked at the permanent desires, it is so obvious that we simply want to continue feeling positive feelings like excitement, enjoyment, inspiration, motivation, generosity, love, joy etc.-in another way, we want to stay being happy.
Happiness
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.
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 connection.
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 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 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 thing that we do is to satisfy the need of keeping alive relationships. It is our relationship to our own body that makes it imperative that we eat and sleep. Because of our relationship to our senses, we are asked to do things to satisfy the demands that body makes. If we ignore the demands that body makes, we have to bear the resultant aches and distress. And above our mundane needs, we yearn for another relationship – a relationship to our very existence – a relationship to our purpose. And without that connection, it is vacant. Just like the blankness so many of us feel when we have no relationship even to ourselves. That is just not the way our lives are supposed to be lived.
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 bonds are 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.
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.
Connection: Our Life
Connection is the core of everything. That’s what life is. Connection.
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 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.
Bonding 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
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.
Bonding 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 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.
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 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.
Even if we don’t know when this game actually started and when it would end, we know that it somehow started in the past and it will end someday. When we close the lid of the game box eventually one day, can we simply say, “Wow, it was so much fun. Let’s play 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 uncomplicated as that. There is just ONE secret.
And the secret is to bond.
To grow into ONE
To relish.
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