He was in high school in grade twelve, so called intermediate second year then.
Our other dear friend was also in the same class but she was a little bit quiet.
She used to talk only about classes, teachers, subjects, home assignments, and exams, nothing more than tidbits about school life.
Occasionally, she used to go for snacks during break but only in a group of friends.
He was my dear friend and was interested in talking beyond that boundary of school tidbits, he was interested in talking about life, relationships, and future plans.
But it never happened because he was unprepared, he was scared, he didn’t have any maturity on how to express feelings or love to somebody else.
As far as I know, he never expressed his feelings to her, he always kept inside himself until he left the school.
Occasionally he shared his feelings with me but not with her.
He absorbed his feelings internally, I am not aware when and how he released it out.
I don’t know how he’s living his life nowadays but recently I made a connection with him via Facebook. Thanks Zuckerberg.
I’m sure there are many people out there who are in the similar situation as my dear friend.
I hope this content will help them.
Feelings convert into pain very quickly if it doesn’t get space to sprout.
After more than two decades now, I figured out how somebody’s feelings and love towards another person dissipates and infects the person internally.
If we live carrying the unexpressed feeling in life, this would be the road to disaster, this could be one of the root causes of our unhappiness.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse and an author of “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” a phenomenal book which is translated into 27 languages talks about unexpressed feeling as a number three regret of dying person.
Number three regret the dying: “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
Few months ago, I remembered that my younger daughter insisted that I go to play with her in the park.
She told me to leave my cell phone at home. I was a little surprised but I could understand.
I asked her why to leave phone at home.
She said that you don’t interact with the park and you don’t enjoy it if you have your cell phone with you.
At that moment I told her, sure, I will leave the phone in the car and I will engage fully with the park.
I spent 30 minutes with her in the park without my cellphone but I saw her cheering face which I’d rarely seen before.
When I came home, I re-evaluated and mostly regretted how I spent the past years with my daughter.
The main reason I was happy that day was because I made my daughter happy by tweaking my small habit to allow her feelings to express.
She expressed quite a number of concerns and feelings during our 30 minutes park tour.
Like it or not, we are living in the world of instant gratification.
Our cell phone has become a tool of instant gratification.
We are caught up in the hustle and bustle of modern life.
We need everything instant, we have e-tickets, we have express check-outs, we have fast food drive-through.
We have microwaves and we need food in a few seconds.
We expect anything to happen in a few seconds to a few minutes.
We don’t expect to wait.
This pattern of life is making us more unhappy than ever before because we are losing the grip of life slowly, we are losing patience very fast.
I’ve also observed the other reason for our unhappiness, “the culture of more.”
We are living in “the culture of more.”
We have one nice house, we need a couple of more including vacation house.
We have one bike, it is working perfectly for our purpose, we need at least two more of different styles.
We have one car, working nicely, but we need one more luxurious car.
I am not against these luxurious things, I personally love them but I’m against the sense of their control in our lives at present and regret when we turn older. I wish I could have lived differently.
What we forget here is we have only 24 hours in a day, we can’t stretch it, we have just 24 hours, that’s it.
When we have more things to take care of, obviously we need to earn more money to maintain these things; a vacation house, a second bike, and a luxurious car.
We have to sacrifice more time to earn more money, not only that we have to also give extra time to maintain these extra things regularly.
Buying is just a first step, major responsibilities come after buying. We have to renovate the vacation house, we have to change the oil in the second bike and second car regularly.
These extra things are soaking all our personal time, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly.
When we create a little free space in our mind then only happy hormones roll the ball on us.
All our emphasis is going more on changing oil in the car rather than changing oil in our body.
Oh, today, I can’t go to the gym, I have to change oil in my car.
Oh, today, I can’t make dinner, I’ll eat frozen pizza because I have to finish the wall painting in my beach house.
All of these “more things” are making us stressed out, remember, we’ve only 24 hours in a day.
We don’t eat nutrient food because food is not our priority, we don’t drink enough water because dehydration goes unnoticed.
Our health is crumbling down because all the time we are hustling out for more things.
We easily become tired due to all of the above, we slept less, we spent less time with our kids and spouse.
If you don’t spend more time with your kids and spouse, you remain unhappy. This is a fact.
For those who don’t have kids or spouses, have a pet and spend time with it, a miracle happens in your life.
Keep in mind, more is not always better. If you know how to distinguish ‘the culture of more’ with ‘culture of enough’, you will remain happy throughout your life.
Our body stops communicating with our mind when we have no clue what meditation, gratitude, and mindfulness are, and how they balance our life.
We never dedicate any time for these things because all of our time is consumed by noise around us.
Meditation, gratitude, and mindfulness teach us a secret of life, here it is: our past is already gone, our future has not been written yet, the only thing we have is the present, so be happy and enjoy it to the fullest.
After a certain time we start to look outside for happiness, outside of our inner life.
By the time we know there is something imbalance in our life, it’s already too late.
Happiness is not outside, it is inside us.
Remember, outside may bring pleasure but it doesn’t always bring happiness.
Understand this fact, happiness is not pleasure, you can certainly buy pleasure for a certain time but you cannot buy happiness.
Think of the time, in school, asking your teacher why you had to learn national geography if you had no intention of using it in real life. Probably, your teacher might have said that you need to learn national geography for your brain development or college preparation or harsh case scenario, “because I said so.”
Now you are an independent adult with a fully mature brain.
Your teacher’s answer doesn’t apply to you any more.
Therefore, you don’t need to fill your mind with useless information.
Always believe what you see and what you do or plan to do, not what others tell you to believe.
You don’t need other people’s approval all the time in your life.
Information is already overloaded due to finger tip’s digital access.
What kind of value are you producing by remembering the names of all the rivers and forests of your country in 21st century’s education unless you are participating in a national quiz competition?
Now you are an adult, if anything that isn’t interesting to you or relevant to you by any means, don’t consume it.
Only consume what is relevant to your life.
Create an extra space in your brain by taking only things or experiences that are relevant to your life.
Don’t let junks walk all over your mind.
Happiness comes from things that matter to you, not from junks.
Happiness is a state of mind, to be happy we have to change our mind.
The interpretation of happiness is highly subjective and it is not an exact science.
Some people read Playboy to become happy, some people read physics to become happy, and some people read companies’ legal and financial reports to become happy.
Some people sing songs to become happy and some people do fishing to become happy.
You get the picutre, why there is so much variation in happiness because it is internal, it has nothing to do with other people’s choices.
We cannot find any good tool to quantify the level of happiness.
If I get my thing then I would be happy is basically an illusion.
If you are not happy now before getting the thing, you will not be happy after getting that thing also.
You must be happy first to get things, otherwise you will stretch your expectations all the time that never end. If it never ends then you never become happy.
Many people think that a lot of money makes them happy.
But in reality people who don’t have money think this way only that a lot of money makes them happy.
I am sure you have seen many people with a lot of money but still unhappy, they are unhappy because they still want only more money, I have certainly seen many of these people.
Here is the fact.
Money itself doesn’t make us happy, it is just a paper with pictures on it, but it gives us freedom and security.
We can utilize money to get freedom according to our interests that make us happy.
If we have nothing to do during our free time, then we again become unhappy.
Money is an amazing tool, one tool out of many, that provides us things and experiences that make us happy, treat it as such.
Happiness also comes from growth, it comes from trying new things, it comes from taking educated and calculated risks in life.
Learn to take big risks, learn to survive big failures. But most importantly, learn how to win big in life so that we can give back to society even bigger.
When we give to society, we become the happiest person because we make other people happy.
Think about your happiness level when you make your kids or your spouse happy, what do you feel? Just go a little bit further to make your neighbor or your community happy, you feel a rush of flow of dopamine and serotonin in your body.
Why didn’t my dear friend propose to our classmate in grade twelve?
Because he didn’t have courage to ask, he didn’t have a risk taking attitude.
Worst of all, what could have happened if he had proposed to her, either she would say yes or no.
Either answer would produce no harm to both of them, but by not taking the risk of asking he got only regret.
Imagine the movie industry and stock market, which movie is going to be a blockbuster and which stock is going to be a 100 X multiplier, nobody knows.
Nobody knows what’s going to work. We can just guess, an educated guess. We can be lucky by an educated guess.
But people who dedicate themselves to making movies or people who invest in the stock market keep doing the same thing. They just don’t expect only the best result, they enjoy taking educated and calculated risks, and when they win, they win big.
Remember, regret of not taking risk is permanent but risk itself is temporary.
People always doubt what you say because these are words but people always believe what you do because these are actions. Happy people love actions not words even though actions are risky.
We all have innate observational and investigative skills for any kind of actions, the only thing is we have to explore by using it.
Once you start exploring, you become more interested to explore more, you start to make flow of your exploration.
This flow institutes a happiness inside you.
Many celebrities are brand-conscious and we have a culture of following them on social media.
I’m not against following the ideal person but I’m against following blindly.
They all wear Gucci items and we try to imitate their persona.
They wear Gucci because they get paid from Gucci to attract the poor and middle class.
This comparison doesn’t make us happy because we are not celebrities, their personal values and our personal values are different.
I have seen former first lady Michelle Obama wearing a pair of J. Crew sage green leather gloves to hold the bible for her husband before a worldwide audience of 140 million plus on TV to be sworn in as America’s first ever African American president.
She could wear Gucci but she didn’t, she wore items from an ordinary retail store.
She did this because she is real, she is not a pretender.
I have seen Barack Obama also wearing J. Crew bow ties many times.
The Obama family declined brands, they showed their love for mass consumer retailers.
Only Louis Vuitton and Gucci don’t show our personality, they are just symbols of luxury.
Remember, luxury is not happiness, it is only pleasure.
To become happy, we must be authentic based on our priorities and values, not by comparing ourselves with Gucci wearing celebrities.
Understand this, you don’t possess happiness, you have to create it according to your own standards.
It is absolutely internal based on your personal expectations and reality.
If you are unhappy, immerse yourself in life with some passion.
We, as humans, came to earth almost 1.2 to 2 million years ago before the modern humans, Homo sapiens, appeared. At that time, there was earth, dirt, soil, rocks, and some plants on the continent.
Many animals appeared and disappeared but why did we humans always thrive?
Because we have a passion for progress, but animals don’t.
We have an amazing brain in our head which other animals don’t have.
The science about our brain is still mysterious, we barely know how it works, but when we associate our passion with it, it works fabulously. Don’t ask me how.
Passion ignites us, passion gives us a reason to live.
Once you have passion to live, you start to marry to yourself first before you marry anybody else.
Now you find a reason to live, you always remain happy.
Connect and engage your passion with your family, friends, and colleagues.
Start small, but start now, once you start, you will know exactly what to do, how to do, and when to do.
This passion would be your happiness project.
We have seen many happy people buying time with their passion but unhappy people waste time complaining about everything.
The mother of John Lennon, the evergreen artist of the Beatles, once asked her son, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
John Lennon replied, “I want to be happy.”
Remember, if you love somebody, just propose today, take the risk and ask, don’t wait for the day that never comes in reality, the so-called tomorrow.
Accept the result and move on, you won’t regret, you feel proud that you asked, you will remain happy irrespective of the answer from the other side.
Good luck everyone, always be happy.
Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina
Progress for valued society