How Can We Become Providers of Happiness?
Every part of nature, the still, vegetative, animate, and human, is fundamentally driven by a desire to enjoy, to receive pleasure and fulfillment. Human beings, however, possess an additional quality: intention. We can use our desires in different ways and calculate how to use other people for our own benefit.
An animal does not operate this way. A lion that kills an antelope because it is hungry has no hidden intention to exploit it. Its desire and action coincide. Human beings, however, have countless calculations, hidden intentions, social conventions, politics, and justifications that conceal our constantly growing egoistic desire.
Throughout history, we have tried to change human nature through different social systems and utopian ideas. These attempts ultimately failed because our fundamental desire to receive pleasure cannot be changed. What can be changed is the intention with which we use that desire, from enjoying at the expense of others to receiving pleasure by bringing enjoyment to others.
We can see a natural example in parents and children. A mother gives to her child because she loves him. She receives tremendous pleasure from seeing him enjoy what she gives. Her desire to enjoy has not disappeared. Love has simply given that desire a new intention: that her child will enjoy.
This contains the secret of happiness.
If we could develop such love toward other people, we could experience fulfillment on an entirely new level. Our intention to benefit others would also bring us into harmony with the integral system of nature, where life exists through connection, reciprocity, balance, and mutual complementarity.
As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, this transformation becomes necessary. The person of the future will understand that happiness is in the correct connection with society. Instead of constantly searching for others to provide happiness, each person will become a supplier of happiness to everyone around them.
Gradually, our external social networks will develop into an inner, spiritual network of connection. Through our intention to give, we will begin to feel ourselves as channels through which goodness can flow to the entire system.
Within this spiritual network, we will discover the source of life itself, the force of love and giving that fills creation.
Unlimited happiness therefore does not come from receiving more for ourselves. It comes from developing optimal connection between us and becoming a source of happiness for others.
Based on "New Life 243 – Happiness and Social Ties, Part 2" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.