Gross National Happiness

          Happiness. What is it? And how do we get there?

          I've now been in Japan for a week. And you know what? I see unhappiness here. I took the metro to Shinjuku, and I counted two homeless people living there and one in Ginza, one of Tokyo's cleanest and nicest [read: expensive] neighborhoods/districts. I went to Tokyo's seediest area (Kabuki-cho) and smelled the filth emanating from the area. I went in with not with the purest of intentions. 

          In July, I wrote:

By what motivation or driving force do you work hard? 

Not by anything in you, but by the stuff of others you cannot put a name to: the tired shrugs and red eyes of your coworkers: realizing you are not alone. You are NOT ALONE. So you walk around the office, eyeing cubicles and hushed conversations between adults. You start talking. You show the empathy that has taken you years to express clearly. The stories they tell are amazing: thematically depicting the anxieties and fears of suburban and urban life. And you realize, you are rich not through or because of your money, but precisely because of the people around you. THAT IS BEING RICH. That is richness of spirit—of the constant abnegation of intellectual poverty—a richness that spreads to others and makes them rich—a happiness that spreads to others and makes them happy. Not of money, but of happiness: the possibility of disinterested concern that would cause us to put forward our brother and sister before ourselves.   

          In June: 

That is love: the endless pursuit to love someone you cannot for all rational reasons or purposes justify completely to yourself. Imagine you are in a sea and you are drowning. But as you are falling into the abyss, you see a blue light out of the corner of your eye: you could swear you saw no such thing five minutes ago. And as you are running out of breath, you decide to swim again. You decide that for all your past effort, your life is worth it. Yeah, you tried getting yourself out: swimming to the top; it didn't work. But maybe because of or regardless of your seeing the light, you know it is within you to love life. And life opens outward; a blue buoy thrown by a passerby fisherman has crossed your path. He (the fisherman) sees you in the water and that you are drowning. He dives in. You are losing consciousness and barely hanging on, but you keep on trying to tread water and lift your body upward. He catches you, holds you, and swims to the surface. The fisherman and his buddies circle around you. He does CPR on your lifeless body. After mouth-to-mouth, you wake with the fervor of a newly-born person. You live.

          Bhutan has this silly idea: Gross National Happiness. How silly; how short-sighted; how remarkably uneconomical. But I ask you this: how did we learn to dismiss happiness so easily? Who taught you to hate your happiness? Who taught you to hate yourself? Who taught you this? And we ask, how may we improve the economy? But I ask you, what is this economy FOR? It’s for us. It’s for our happiness and the happiness of our children to come. Because... when does Gross National Product or GDP make us happy? It does not; it does not; and if you argue that it does [through some silly economic theory] then I argue you yourself are quite disillusioned indeed. 

          Happiness is not free and so it is with freedom. We all require freedom to create—this is the origin of what could instill a loving attitude toward ourselves. But how far are you willing to go to love something? How far? I love writing but I know there are things I am not willing to give up to write what I could write or write what I want to write. For writing is a fire, and it diminishes to a small flame at times. And at time, when you’re not feeling great, it becomes the tiniest of flickering sparks that you try to channel [like electricity] to another human being. 

          That is richness. That is richness of spirit—of the constant abnegation of intellectual poverty—a richness that spreads to others and makes them rich—a happiness that spreads to others and makes them happy. That is love: the endless pursuit to love someone you cannot for all rational reasons or purposes justify completely to yourself.

          Love yourself, and love your happiness. LOVE YOUR HAPPINESS. Be in love with it and treat it with care. Be willing to take the bullet so that you and others can be happy. Who taught you to love your happiness? If no one in your life has taught you this in a face-to-face encounter, then you learned it from me. Who taught you to hate yourself? If you do not, then fine. Loving your happy-ness does not mean you have free reign to deny those feelings to others: precisely the opposite! Loving your happiness means you help others to realize their own. THAT IS BEING HAPPY. Open doors for others. Walk deliberately and let people in greater hurries walk in front of you. Saunter about with a silly grin on your face. Smile at strangers. Hum and sing a tune you just made up five minutes ago. Stumble over a step and leave a cheeky beam on your face as the only evidence of your previous blunder. Stroll around with your fly open [accidentally] and close it on the metro with a pretty female across from you [yes, I did this, haha]. 

Penn Counterparts covering Carrie Underwood:  

‘Cause sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbing is just a grain of sand 

And what you’ve been out there searching for forever 

Is in your hands 

And when you figure out 

Love is all that matters after all 

It sure makes everything else 

Seem so small