The New Year is a symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. People the world over make lists to catalogue what can realistically be achieved until the clock strikes twelve again in 12 months time.
So why are Facebook and Twitter saturated with Back to Work Blues-status updates? Is the pursuit of Achievement at odds with the pursuit of Happiness?
What is Happiness? Most of us look forward to accumulating enough wealth to buy it.Hopefully it will be in a box we open or behind the lock that corresponds to a key we’ll come to hold in our hands.
According to Matthieu Ricard (ex molecular biologist with the Pasteur Institute,** turned Buddhist Monk) French Intellectual circles (and most of us in the Western World) are not concerned with Happiness.
Their reaction to a paper he published on the subject of Happiness was that they don’t need it. Apparently they need to live with passion, they like the ups and downs of life, they like the suffering because it’s so good when it ceases for a while.
Last night I went searching for encouraging stories told by people who don’t dread their first day back to work. I listened to talks by Elizabeth Gilbert, Stephen Hawking, Amy Tan, Matthieu Ricard and Woody Allen.
As Stephen Hawking lectured on the hypothesis that the Universe can spontaneously create itself out of nothing and then slowly expand into infinity again, I wondered if maybe…………….just maybe …………this miracle of creation we call home is here to facilitate something other than the accumulation of Wealth, Power and the general hoarding of “Stuff” we don’t need.
Maybe its time to consider that this cycle we’re on has been tested many times and quite frankly it’s just boosting the sales of alcohol, antidepressants and self help books.
So, what if this year we follow our hearts a bit more? Pursue goals we truly yearn for a bit more? Fill our lives with little particles of happiness a bit more frequently?
I don’t want to do something called “work” every day if the Universe is expanding.*
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pa34orcwwA
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteur_Institute
