Again and again we are led to believe that our most important goal in life should be to be happy. There are countless books, therapists, gurus, wealthy people, dropouts, relationship experts and celebrities who model exactly this image for us. Thousands of pieces of advice from every side on how we can improve and develop ourselves so that we can finally live happily. So many images of happy people appear in the media that we don't question this idea – and we compare our lives to it.

In truth, however, happiness – like all feelings – lasts only a short while. Constantly asking whether I feel happy is the direct path into depression. We feel there is something wrong with us when dullness, anger, fear, lethargy, meaninglessness or emptiness spread out.

Yet it is an unspoken truth that striving for happiness and searching for happy images and ideas separate us more and more from life.

Life cannot only be lived happily; it cannot only be experienced in love or joy. The vulnerability of life and the constant movement of feelings are intended – they are simply reality. It is madness to expect anything else.

Changing our perception and taking our simple, fundamental being as our most important anchor is the path of radical liberation.

Am I here, and do I feel?
These are the questions we can ask ourselves again and again.

These liberating questions – without searching for a particular feeling, a scale of well-being or any guessing about our state of mind – allow life to appear in all its fullness and diversity. When these questions about being here are answered with yes, cheering and joy are allowed. Because it means you are alive, and this "I am here" is the gateway to the existential. It is the beginning of the self-inquiry into whether there is anything greater than "my personal" life.

Delighting in being lets life breathe a sigh of relief.
Being here is the miracle and the path.

Only here and now can you recognize that life is not about happiness or failure. With this recognition, important impulses can come into life – impulses that may not always feel good, but that bring clarity and something new.

To live being, to let it unfold and to feel it, is probably the happiest activity there is. You have arrived – in every moment that you are here, for all eternity.

Love,
Pratibha & Kareem