Happiness is a contrast emotion, wherever you are, happiness is one conversation away.
The bigger the things you commit yourself to tackling the smaller your everyday miseries tend to become in contrast.
This is provided that you have enough integrity so as to take authentic actions to honour your word and keep your commitments. When you stop acting authentically, that is a source of misery.
It is not enough to commit to things in your own head (actually the less time you spend in there the better.) Three words said to another are worth 3000 words said to yourself. You must share your commitment.
My commitment is to a world that works for all living things.
This commitment is a wellspring of happiness. As long as I get decent sleep. ( I have had depression when sleep deprived eg. my teenage years.)
So what authentic actions are being taken? One thing I have noticed is that when you make a really big commitment in service of others you tend to hang with great people so a lot of great stuff gets done. Special thanks to; Kerrie Liao, Sean O'Sullivan, James Whelton, Marie-Noelle Keijzer, Sally hudson, Aubrey de Grey and the many others who get stuff done with grace, ease and love.
A world that works has to be broken down in to several realms and the prevailing discourse in each realm analysed to discover new contexts that can be created to address what is not working. ( Yeah I know and go on figure it out ) :-)
In the realm of environment -
Trees make clouds - Clouds reflect sunshine - increase equatorial albedo through a 2% increase in cloud cover and you put a stopper in global warming for a while. So plant trees! You see it rains where there are rain-forests because rain forests make it rain. WeForest has planted 6,000,000 trees empowering impoverished women to be come food foresters to assist themselves and the planet. I am committed to not flying until we plant 100 million trees.
In the realm of entrepreneurialism -
Synthetic Biology is about to leap from the province of the large corporates and universities to the province or startup entrepreneurs. My daughters type 1 diabetes pointed me at synthetic biology as a way to make her insulin, Through our SynBioaxlr8r and HAXLR8R programs we are supporting entrepreneurs to get a head start right now. If you know a budding entrepreneur then direct them to our programs where they will get mentoring and cash.
In the realm of medicine -
As a founding board member of SENS ( health span is more important than life span ) I get to see the latest technology around health. Issues with resuscitative techniques have lead to heelgood a charity around redefining CPR ergonomics. They also lead me to Dr Lentz and the International Immunology foundation who appear to have as close to a generic cure for cancer as I have yet seen with the lowest risk of complications of any treatment I have heard of.
In the realm of education -
Computer programming is a language skill and the best coders are poets in that they combine their creativity with an economy of expression. When is the best time to learn a language?
CoderDojo is a global movement of clubs for kids aged 5-17 that provides an open and totally free learning environment for kids to learn to code. It is in 43 countries and if there is not one near you its open source and free of charge so you can start your own. Kids who can code get such a great grasp of technology and if you don't "get" technology then you are at the mercy of the technology and those who do "get" it.
In the realm of family -
We live of an organic small holding and grow a fair bit of our own food. We home school our kids some of whom also go to CoderDojo. Many thanks to Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages and also to Mark Goulston's just listen. I am eagerly anticipating the day when our three kids state the missions they have in life. Above all family takes time and that time is worth it. When I do not put in the time that too is a source of misery.
So my commitments and actions bring happiness even when I fail and I guess I failed and continued to fail a bit more than most. Failure is a core part of the context of learning so failure can also be a gateway to happiness. Oh and because happiness is a contrast emotion you cannot be happy all the time and you can be happy when you choose and happier in general and while you cannot make anyone else happy you can be of service, be polite and authentically be of good cheer which are the next best things.
I wish you all great happiness from taking on big commitments in service.
Bill
[email protected]
Ireland
Trustee - The Nominet Trust
Special Envoy - St Kitts and Nevis
Venture Partner - SOSventures ( author Stone Soup - The secret recipe for making something from nothing)
Co-Founder - WeForest ( author Forests - Reasons to be hopeful )
Co-Founder - CoderDojo
Founding Board member - SENS foundation
My favourite word is Paraprosdokian
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde
Stop reading and go do something good :-)