Why are we living? What have we come here for? Every day we hear questions about the aim and purpose of our lives. And most of us continuously search for answers. How can we find happiness? That is one more question forcing us to search for its answer every day. What if the answer to those questions is straightforward? What if all those questions are just about ONE thing? Relationship. The secret of happiness is elucidated in the clear and inspiring voice of Masami Sato in the following excerpt of her book, ONE.
What are we trying to find out?
There are a host of things that we do in our lives.
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.
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?\”
At first, it looked as if people were in search of different things, as they gave casual answers like \”A nice partner\”, \”Good job\”, \”My own house\”, \”A loving family\”, \”A perfect mate\”, \”More money\”, \”Financial Freedom\”, \”Peace of mind\”, or \”Meaning of life\”. There were other similar answers as well.
I actually noticed that some of these things are temporal desires and some are more permanent desires. Temporal desire means we want it because we do not have it yet or we don\’t think we have it yet. On the other hand, permanent desire is not about attaining things we do not have. It is about the \’feeling\’ we seek so this does not end no matter what we get or achieve at each moment of our life.
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
Delightfulness is a state of emotion that every one us are longing to experience. Every one of us may define it in a different way. We may even evaluate it differently. We may sense it at varied levels of intensity. But without doubt, we have something in general when delightfulness comes to us. And when we understand this secret about delightfulness, we hold the knowledge to become more delighted, and to make others around us too feel the same sensations.
Life is a mystery we are all living in. We all may love it in our own special ways. We may despise it in different ways. We may question it. We may treasure it. Or we may just have it, accept it, indifferently. But what is the purpose of our lives? What if the secret of our existence is so near? What if the secret actually brings us happiness and contentment 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 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 buy good clothes or go to a hairdressing saloon for a better relationship with our aesthetical sense and to our own physical appearance. We eat all types of food to feel more connected to the sense of taste and flavour. We eat out to feel the relationship to the people we dine with. We get mobile phones and computers to weave relationships with others and the world. We read magazines and newspapers to remain in touch with whatever is going on and what others are doing and experiencing. We educate ourselves to keep in touch with what others know and 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.
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 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.
Connection: 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 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.
Relationship: Our Life .
Bonding is the core of all things. That is what life is about. Bonding.
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 actions and choices also express the need for connection. We are designed to constantly seek ways to connect to each other and to a greater purpose.
Relationship and Religion
Some of us choose to be part of different religions to feel more connected. The connection they seek could be to God. It could be to the people with the same belief. When we share the same belief, it creates a stronger sense of bonding within that group of people. More giving happens naturally among people who are feeling connected 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 give rise to polemics or battles to enjoy a sense of \’success\’ or maybe a greater feeling of assurance and self-worth. But this only boomerangs. The moment we are \’successful\’ in the battle, we are really severing the bonds with others. We are now in need of more confidence to safeguard ourselves from being assailed by others. The result is that we become more vulnerable and frightened. We cannot treat this as a joke because it actually happens to each one of us in diverse ways.
It may be the arguments we have with people around us. It may be the negative judgement we make when we feel something or someone is wrong. When we try to be the only one to win, we can never win in the real way-we feel disconnected. We can only truly celebrate the victory with others when we win together. Then we feel connected.
Despite the myriad ways in which we communicate our wants, everything we do is to fulfil the longing we have to feel and have strong bonds.
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 like a play. We act things and feel things in a play but actually, the aim of the play is to derive pleasure out of it. It is not about acting out things, doing things. When the curtain falls finally, the winners are the ones who have experienced joy by acting. Not the ones who received more applause in the end. The effects and upshots of a play in which we acted do not affect our real life. But if we lost all our life to act in a play just because we wanted to be the best actor there, would it make us the best actor of the play?
It is easy to comprehend this when compared to acting in a play, but we often fail to understand it while enacting the play of life. We do not remember that life is also a play.
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 the sports of life, the aim of the game is to establish a relationship. We can keep connecting until we all unite to become one. It is the one way to constantly feel the relationship to our objective – the feeling of pleasure and delight. We cannot feel detached from the relationship to anything or refuse and conclude even one thing if we are to achieve a lasting relationship.
Life is as uncomplicated as that. There is just ONE secret.
And the secret is to establish a relationship.
To turn into ONE
To find pleasure.
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