If You Want Happiness, Tie It To A Goal. Not To People

Recently I was scrolling on Instagram and came across a saying. It says, "If you want happiness, tie it to a goal, not to people or things." Beautiful, right? But for me, why should happiness be tied to anything at all? Because the moment I tie my happiness to something, I have already created a condition. I am saying, "I will be happy if this happens." And life, with its usual sense of humor, hears the condition and says, "Let us see how badly I can disappoint you." Right?

We say we want happiness. But what do we actually do? We attach happiness to people. "I will be happy when I find the right person," and things like that. Then we find someone. For a few months everything feels beautiful. Their message makes the day brighter. Their voice becomes like music. Their presence feels like home, right? Then something changes. They become busy. They stop replying quickly. They misunderstand us. They become different. Or perhaps we become different. And suddenly, the same person who was once the source of our happiness becomes the source of our anxiety. What happened? The person changed. But more importantly, our expectation also changed.

We secretly asked another human being to carry our emotional life. That is a ridiculous responsibility to give another person. Imagine giving someone your house keys and saying, "Please decide whether I am allowed to feel peaceful today." That's what we all do. That is essentially what we do when we make another person responsible for our happiness. We hand them the remote control to our mind. They reply to the message, we feel happy. They do not reply, we suffer. They compliment us, we feel valuable. They criticize us, we feel worthless. And so on and so on and so on.

You see, for me, this is one of the greatest absurdities of human life. We complain that people control us while constantly giving them the permission to control us. How pathetic we all have become. And then we call it love. Here's the thing. Now, this does not mean people do not matter. Of course they matter. Friendship matters. Love matters. Family matters. Human connection matters. But there is a difference between being happy with someone and depending on someone for your happiness. Right? There is a clear difference between being happy with someone and depending on someone for your happiness.

You see, if I enjoy the shade of the tree, I can sit under it. But I do not demand that the tree follow me everywhere. If the tree disappears, I may be sad. But I do not conclude that the sun has been abolished. Right? That is the difference. A person can add beauty to life without becoming the foundation of life.

The same problem happens with things also. We say, "When I get the car, I will be happy. When I get the house, I will be happy." And then we get the thing. For a little while, it works. The new phone feels wonderful, or the new car smells wonderful. But human beings have a very strange disease. This is the thing. We have a very strange disease. We get used to everything. Yesterday's luxury becomes today's normal. An expensive phone becomes just a phone. The car that once made us feel successful becomes the car we curse when traffic stops moving. This is the tragedy of possession.

And this is with everything, including spirituality, including worldly material or worldly stuff. We think we possess things. Very often, things possess us. You buy a beautiful watch; now you worry about scratching it. You buy an expensive car; now you worry about maintaining it. Human beings are remarkably talented at turning comfort into anxiety. And that's why we are all crying. Spiritual people also cry. Worldly people also cry. That's the beauty of it, or the sad part of it. This is why tying happiness to things is dangerous. Things are unstable. People are unstable. Circumstances are unstable. And if my happiness depends upon unstable things, then my happiness becomes unstable too.

Now we arrive at the idea of the goal. If people and possessions are unreliable foundations for happiness, perhaps goals are better. Right? A goal is different. Why I say a goal is different is because a goal gives direction. If I say I want to write a book, I have something to move toward. If I say I want to build a business, I have something to work on. If I say I want to learn music, I have something to practice, and things like that. A goal gives the mind somewhere to go. And there is something beautiful about that. For me, a goal does not guarantee happiness. It gives suffering a direction. That is the thing with a goal. It gives suffering a direction, and that is already useful because suffering without direction feels like drowning. Suffering with direction can feel like walking through a difficult road or like swimming in water.

That is why I emphasize solitude and silence. You know why? Because in solitude and silence, you see yourself as you are, not as someone people have spoken about. Your true nature is absolute awareness. You are not direction, goal, suffering, woman, man, and blah blah blah stuff. You are the awareness on which the entire drama of your life and the creation is existing. This can be understood not by listening to me, but by turning your mind within and seeing things for yourself. And this is the truth. We are busy looking at the things that are happening, but pay very little attention to that on which the things are happening. I am talking about the screen, but we are all busy discussing the movie. What can we do?