Let’s never fool ourselves into thinking this world isn’t set up the way we have collectively set out to set it up. We have collectively shaped and changed society with each new innovation. From the agricultural age to the industrial revolution through to the information age (where our fingers move fast and our flimsy interactions with people even faster. More of that in another post perhaps).
A world designed by meetings in coffee shops, dinners and restaurants and late-night parties in clubs (that too often end in forgotten values, broken hearts and bleeding mascara).
This world we have designed recently has taken a stance to wholly endorse statements such as “your happiness is all that matters” and “you create your own happiness” as if it where some goal to be achieved or as if happiness has any actual value in and of itself.
This same world is filled with the majority of us who experience honest, true and enduring happiness as some vague and distant concept. The proverbial carrot on the stick that we drive our lives towards while it always seems to remain just too far off, ever elusive.
Show me a world where “happily ever after” is the standard and I will show you a dull and dreary world devoid of the strength of characters such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa , none of which put personal happiness first, I can assure you.
A world devoid of the art derived from the sufferings of Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Bukowski or Silvia Plath.
The list could go on indefinitely but I would like to make a definite point. Our personal happiness is the driver of very little, chasing personal happiness for its own sake leads to relationships that will end prematurely as they are viewed negatively for not seeming to serve you. True friendships that could last lifetimes but rather die when you avoid criticism because it attacks your personal happiness, whilst unwittingly avoiding growth at the same time. (I would love to never hear the phase “toxic people” again in my lifetime!)
So, I ask you, lets abandon personal happiness as a metric by which to measure the state of our lives and rediscover that old classic “treat others as you’d like to be treated” even when that means putting your personal happiness aside for small moments in time.
In the end you will find that happiness is not a goal or destination. It is a byproduct.
Honestly though, there is no need to take my word for it, just take a look through the history books at those most selfless of people, what they achieved and see for yourself!
