Peeling off layers to get to the core
We are all in the pursuit of happiness in this man-made world. While the poor envy the rich for their luxuries and lifestyles, the rich want to get more wealthy and powerful. In this race, they compromise on the life they could have led, making the world seem to be black and white or zeros and ones. It's up to us to make life more colorful and non-linear.
We seek happiness because we are not aware of what makes us happy, hence some go after wealth to find happiness, others look for it in relationships or visiting places or in extreme cases use substances to make them happy. It's all in the mind! We feel happy, sad, jealous, or angry all because of the different hormones secreted by the brain. So how can we train our brain to secrete the right chemicals? Is there a way we can find true happiness?
The answer lies in the growth of a human.
When a child starts becoming aware of the world around them, their perceptions tend to take shape in accordance to the experiences they encounter. Some experiences create a deep impact, some mild, and some have no effect at all. It all depends on our surroundings, our exposure, our people and the ecosystem we live in and this forms the core.
In the formative stages, we discover that some experiences leave a deep-rooted impact on our brains. During this stage, we are not encouraged, taught, or allowed to question our thoughts and beliefs.We are bound by societal rules that didn’t seem severe when we were younger, but as we grew, those shackles became stronger. Unfortunately, the education system is too linear to encompass every child’s potential. We have learnt to reason, but sometimes the information can get so overwhelming that we can't seem to comprehend them. This is when we rely upon our friends, teachers, and family to help us find the truth in all the information. If they are not rational, then chances are that they too were biased to the information that the world wanted them to believe, which may just be a version of the truth but not the truth as a whole.
We believe in this version, as the person who convinces us is someone who we trust, and thus our mind now accumulates more information and knowledge that others have curated for us. A version of others surrounds our own version of the world. Sooner or later these layers become dense as new layers form. And soon our perception of the world is completely forgotten underneath these layers.
How can one be happy living someone else’s life? Occasionally, we may coincide with certain paths that make us happy, but the remaining times we might feel like puppets being controlled by someone else. This is because we haven’t questioned what makes us happy. It's during those times our core thoughts that haven’t been triggered are triggered.
The more we peel the layers to get in touch with our core, the more active that part becomes. And by aligning our core beliefs to our profession and values, we tend to be happier.
In today’s world, we are surrounded by stories that the media wants us to believe, religions that preach to us how to live, and political parties telling us why they should be our future. All of this is displayed constantly on our screens, fuelled by the money we pay in taxes, and by buying these products that will apparently bring us happiness, we have unknowingly created a perpetual layer-creating machine that keeps adding layers to our core identity. The more time we take to realise this, the harder it will be to peel off the layers and the longer it will take to come to terms with reality.
