Note: I wanted to try something different and refreshing with this weeks article, and I can only hope that my message about the importance of learning what happiness actually is comes across despite the writing style.

The metallic doorknob was warm to the touch. The door itself was of sturdy, wooden make, and behind the door would be 28 second year high school students whose lives he wanted to change. This was the moment of truth, so to speak. This was what the hard work of the past two years had been leading to. This would be, for the first time ever, Happiness 101 - an elective course in the science and philosophy of happiness, aimed at students who still were to decide what they wanted to do with their lives.

He wished that he would have had a chance to attend this course back when he was a student. It would have saved him a few years of drudgery, moving from job to job, from illusion to illusion, trying to pursue fleeting images of what would make him happy. He imagined being happy traveling the world. He wasn't. He imagined having a nice house and a nice car to make him happy. They didn't. He tried other pursuits too; practicing martial arts and immersing himself in painting, and sometimes he did feed happiness, but the happiness was always on the run, always seeming to slip his grasp and move farther away when he was about to reach it.

Then, two years ago, a friend of his shared a link on facebook that changed his life. It was a video recording of Matthieu Ricard's speech about the Habits of happiness. In that speech there is a section that imprinted itself on his memory, a section which he can recall word-by-word even to this day: 

So how do we proceed in our quest for happiness? Very often we look outside. We think that if we could gather this and that, all the conditions, something that we say "everything to be happy." To have everything to be happy, that very sentence already bears the doom of destruction of happiness; to have everything. If we miss something it collapses. And also when things go wrong we try to fix things outside so much, but our control on the outer world is limited, temporary, and often illusory.

So now look at inner conditions. Aren't they stronger? Isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering? And isn't that stronger? We know by experience, that we can be in what we call "a little paradise" and yet be completely unhappy within.

...The experience that translates everything is within the mind.

He had found his explanation. He began to understand why those illusions and pursuits of happiness had failed. He finally realized, that happiness is an entirely internal emotion, a process within oneself that is to some extent affected by what happens outside, but is a lot more dependent on other inner processes and state of mind. And with this realization his whole perspective on negative emotions changed. He learned to accept them, to recognize them for what they are; internal processes. And slowly he learned to let them go whenever they appeared. And as a result he was happier than ever.

This experience had another effect on him as well. He became fascinated by happiness, and what we actually know about it. This fascination sent him on a quest for knowledge on what was scientifically known about happiness, and what the philosophers of different times had written about it. While learning and discovering, and in the process becoming a more content person himself, he started to feel the urge to share this feeling. He wanted others to know about it, so that they too could be happier and give up the pursuit of the external conditions that can only provide fleeting happiness at best.

The door in front of him, the hand touching the metallic doorknob, was the culmination of his personal journey into happiness. He twisted his hand and pulled the door open. He could feel curious eyes looking at him as he walked into the classroom. He could hear the hubbub receding as he put his jacket on the back of the teacher's chair and turned to faced his audience. 'God, they look so young,' he thought, and a moment of doubt hit him: 'What if they are too young, or too inexperienced to understand what I'll be teaching? But then again, it's now or never. Soon they have to decide whether they want to spend the next 40-50 years in engineering, physics, medicine, law... And if they don't have good understanding about happiness before that decision, there's a high chance that they, like so many others, will end up with unfulfilling lives.'

He cleared his throat and started speaking. 'Hello everyone, my name is Mr. Willow, and we will be spending these Wednesday mornings talking about happiness. I believe, that happiness is one of the most fundamental drivers that affect people's decisions, and I trust that each and everyone of you wants to be happy. We will look into recent scientific research on happiness; what is actually known about it, and what common misconceptions are there. You'll learn that people are surprisingly bad at estimating what would actually make them happy, or what they really want, and most people seem to spend their lives pursuing fleeting, or momentary happiness without understanding what happiness really is, and how it can become a permanent state of being instead of just a passing feeling.'

It was quiet now in the classroom. He thought he could feel tension in the air. As if the students were shouting 'Finally!' within their heads. He looked them in the eye, from left to right, and continued. 'We will look into how we humans believe that having a lot of freedom and choice makes us happy, when in reality it's almost the opposite. We will learn how our minds actually synthesize happiness, making us more content with some of the decisions we make than what would be rational. We will study how different chemicals that our bodies release affect our feelings, and what causes the release of those chemicals...'

Two hours later the classroom was empty, and he was feeling exhausted and excited at the same time. He was surprised how intently the students had listened to his every word, and how eager they were to participate in the class discussion. He had hoped that happiness would be a subject matter that was so personal and important to everyone that they would really want to listen to what he had to say, but until now it hadn't been possible to know for sure.

After introducing the course he had proceeded to break down happiness into different, more specific concepts such as sensory pleasures, amusement, contentment, relief, excitement, wonder, ecstasy, elevation, gratitude, and compassion. Much of the class had been spent discussing the definition of what happiness really is in order to build a foundation for the coming sessions. 

To stimulate the minds of the students and encourage some creative thinking, he had divided them into small groups and given each of them 15 minutes to discuss possible reasons and explanations for why rich people are not happy. Some of them might be, but why doesn't money and power themselves bring happiness? One group came up with an answer that got stuck in his mind: Rich people are unhappy because they have nothing to dream for.

He realized that this group had stumbled on something profound: they have nothing to dream for. As long as one has dreams, or aspirations, it means that the current state of being can be improved. It means that even if one is unhappy or discontent at the moment, that dream is something to work towards. It gives hope. Even though the dream might be just an illusion and realizing it doesn't provide lasting happiness, simply being able to dream can be a powerful thing.

Being rich and powerful - with enough money to do anything you want - but still unhappy is a scary situation to be in. It means that nothing you can do will make you happy. You can realize every dream you have, and when those dreams coming true provide only fleeting moments of happiness at best, you will be left discontent and without anything to dream for. What a feeling of hopelessness that might be!

For homework assignment, and to prepare for the next weeks session, he had instructed each student to think and write an essay about what Adam Smith had said:

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another... Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

This was what he had set out to do all those months ago, and it was happening right now. He felt empowered. He felt, that if only he could make these kids think what really makes them happy, not only would it improve their own lives, but in the long run it could change the world. Perhaps others would also see that the extensive, destructive materialism does not bring happiness, so why destroy this planet in pursuing it? A good and happy life does not require all that stuff we tend to surround ourselves with.

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