Here's my formula for happiness. What's yours?

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Ignore the bad things that you find depressing. Just focus on the good.

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Does that describe you? If it does, good. You have most of humanity on your side.

That happiness still eludes you despite ignoring the bad things probably didn't escape you either I'm sure.

Yea everybody who ignores the bad looks happy for a while. Soon enough they become like any other dissatisfied ranter on facebook, twitter and myspace. They can tell you exactly what they're unhappy about. Turns out they're very aware of what's going on all along. Well, so much for taking their own advice to ignore bad things.

It took me a while to understand that when people say ignore, what they really mean is repress and if I know dumspters, I know you can only press in so much.

No wonder polite ladies and gentlemen erupt into raging fits when they can't fit any more in.

This is something I've thought about for years but at this moment, if I could squeeze my formula for happiness into one line, it would be this.

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Understanding is happiness.
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Let me qualify that a bit so stay with me here.

First let me illustrate how understanding works. When we understand that there's no such things as ghosts or evil curses, through our knowledge of physics, chemistry and stuff, we stop being afraid of them. In fact we laugh at the very idea. That is what understanding does. It shines a powerful light onto our dark fears and reveals them for what they are.

Now what's stopping you from shining the same light on every nonsense that hits you, from useless traditions to silly political news? Yes, your stress would evaporate or at the very least, shrink to half its usual size. You can finally laugh when everyone's having a fit. Wouldn't you be happier becoz of it?

You have to appreciate that to understand, you can't cherry-pick only the realities you like and pretend the rest don't exist becoz let's face it, you can't choose what hits you. But you can learn the skill of taking each nonsense by the horns and busting it through critical examination so it won't ever trip you up again.

I have even suspected that might be the purpose of our brains.

When we understand, we're enlightened. When we're enlightened, we walk steady in the storm. Nothing shakes us.

But as to how we went from "lets get enlightened" to "lets ignore the problem so that we would be happy and problem-free," I have no idea.

Now, we all love shortcuts and I wanna talk about this instant-noodle method of achieving happiness through wisdom-quote programming.

We seem to have this idea that the secret of happiness lies somewhere in those wisdoms. We believe the conclusions of Voltaire, Nietzche, Confucius to be absolute and if they say can means can, cannot means cannot.

I don't buy that. The invention of the Internet itself is enough for me to take Plato's and Socrates' truths about man with a grain of salt. One fact about us is we don't stagnate. We evolve, and it is precisely becoz we evolve that we need to critically look at everything again, especially if those ideas were cast in a different age. Otherwise we risk running into 2,000 year old brick walls. (Child brides and honour killings come to mind.)

But there's a problem. We're lazy. Too lazy to think, to ponder, to test wisdoms. We believe no more new realizations are possible, and that everything worth understanding is already revealed to us through those wisdoms. Just follow them lah.
 
So armed with all the motivational quotes we found we should be happy. Right?

Wrong. In truth we're more like the donkey that carried the holy scriptures.

Hey I got bags of wisdoms. I'm happy!

The fact that our troubles and our anger haven't left us makes it self-evident that those quotes are worth jack.

Sure we can argue that its the person's fault, not the wisdom's but seriously, does it matter? If so little of humanity can extract enough good from it to make a difference, doesn't it make you wonder if revealed truths actually work for our species?

Now there's nothing wrong with indulging in second-hand wisdom if it can help us find our own wisdom, those personally discovered truths that are so necessary in our journey to finding understanding and happiness.

Two things I'll say about discovered truths. First, if you're lazy, forget it. This journey requires you to think and meditate on issues, study new things and worse, change mindsets. Second, discovered truths don't negate second hand truths. Well, not always. They just give us a chance to test them for validity. However, if releasing your happiness from the clutches of fear is your priority, revealed truth is a poor substitute for discovered truth. Simply put, you can watch Oprah all you like but it ain't getting you anywhere if you refuse to walk through the fire.

That is why I don't think you can find lasting happiness by being lazy or being voluntarily ignorant but then again, that's just me.