One of my all-time favorite memes is from John Lennon. The story he tells is, “When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” I don’t know the veracity of the story but it sums up things nicely. Part of the reason the story resonates is because it highlights the disconnect between what society tells us we should want, and what we actually should want. It also challenges us to reconsider what truly matters in a life well-lived.
“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
While institutions prepare us for careers, they rarely equip us for the pursuit of genuine happiness—arguably the thing we should be striving for. Life’s ultimate goal, I believe, should be the cultivation of well-being. Your own well-being and that of others. That doesn’t mean moving from one ecstatic moment to the next with ever-increasing bliss. That would be unrealistic. True happiness encompasses the full spectrum of human experience—the capacity to find joy in everyday moments, derive meaning from challenging times, and develop resilience during the bad ones.
Unfortunately, our society (Western society) and many societies around the world are not set up to maximize happiness. They are focused on other outcomes. In capitalism, as it exists in the West, focus is on growth, production and consumption. The system is intentionally set up to maximize profits. Advertising is a crucial component to this system. It tells us to never be satisfied. Happiness is just one purchase away.
Interestingly, in Bhutan they have something they call the Gross National Happiness. The King of Bhutan, in the 70’s stated “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product.” And it takes a holistic approach towards progress giving equal importance to the non-economic impact of development. It’s important that the citizens are happy, not just productive.
For many of us, happiness is a secondary consideration. We work harder to make more money to buy stuff we don’t need to impress people we don’t like because we think it will lead to happiness. This environment traps many of us in what we’ve aptly labeled “the rat race”—an endless cycle of striving that never quite delivers on its promises of fulfillment. The challenge therefore becomes how to make a life within these systems that meets your needs and increases your happiness.
I firmly believe that happiness is fundamentally an inside job. While external circumstances certainly influence our emotional state, no person, achievement, or possession can create sustainable happiness for you. And understanding that you are responsible for your own happiness is the first step in achieving this well-being. Once you realize this, you can begin to figure out what it is that actually makes you happy.
As I reflect on my fifty years of experience, the familiar adage “youth is wasted on the young” takes on increasingly profound significance. This isn’t about begrudging young people their vitality and potential, but rather recognizing the poignant paradox that we gain wisdom precisely when our energy and opportunities begin to diminish. How transformative it would be to possess the boundless energy and open horizons of youth combined with the wisdom that typically come only through decades of experience. I think of my fifty-plus trips around the sun and some of the lessons I learned. I wonder, if I had known them then, would I have made different decisions?
Undoubtedly.
You may feel overwhelmed and uncertain about how to get your life on track. If you feel like you’re constantly spinning your wheels and never making any real progress, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with finding direction and purpose in their lives, and it can be tough to know where to start when it comes to getting your act together. The system is set up that way intentionally.
It is best explained by Alan Watts when describing why your life is not a journey.
“The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at.
But that it is best understood by the analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say, “You play the piano” You don’t work the piano.
Why? Music differs from say, travel. When you travel, you are trying to get somewhere. In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of the composition. The point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales. People would go to a concert just to hear one crackling chord… Because that’s the end!
Same way with dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room because that’s where you will arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance.
But we don’t see that as something brought by our education into our conduct. We have a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It’s all graded and what we do is put the child into the corridor of this grade system with a kind of, “Come on kitty, kitty.” And you go onto kindergarten and that’s a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade.
Then, “Come on” first grade leads to second grade and so on. And then you get out of grade school and you got high school. It’s revving up, the thing is coming, then you’re going to go to college… Then you’ve got graduate school, and when you’re through with graduate school you go out to join the world.
Then you get into some racket where you’re selling insurance. And they’ve got that quota to make, and you’re gonna make that. And all the time that thing is coming – It’s coming, it’s coming, that great thing. The success you’re working for.
Then you wake up one day about 40 years old and you say, “My God, I’ve arrived. I’m there.” And you don’t feel very different from what you’ve always felt.
Look at the people who live to retire; to put those savings away. And then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left. They’re more or less impotent. And they go and rot in some, old peoples, senior citizens community. Because we simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.
If we thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at that end, and the thing was to get to that thing at that end. Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
The good news is that it is possible to turn things around. With the right tools and mindset, you can take control of your life and start moving forward to a life that fills you with happiness. This transformation isn’t about dramatic overnight changes or following someone else’s blueprint for success. It’s not a 12-step program or a quick-fix. Rather, it’s about making conscious choices that align with your authentic self and developing practices that lead well-being over time.
I am going to post weekly about my approach to this life-long project and hopefully someone else will find it useful. In the meantime, what did you write when asked what you wanted to be when you grew up?