The Power Of One…..And So Say All Of Us

I don’t go looking for TED Talks but they seem to come looking for me. Today the first blog post I read was on Fi’s page. A blog post of honesty and self-reflection and one that led me to writing this post.

I don’t know Fi all that well, partly because I haven’t followed her for an immensely long time and partly because, during that time, Fi hasn’t always been around. I don’t know exactly what keeps Fi from her blog but, from poems and pieces she has written, I sense someone who, like us all, needs to go searching at times.

The search may lead us to places we would rather not go, to thinking of things we, for whatever reason, need to think on even while those thoughts may not lead us immediately to where we want to be.

The place most, if not all of us, want to be is a place called Happiness.

The Ted Talk below is given by a man whose job title is, for real, ‘Jolly Good Fellow’.

(source)

He works for Google and it sounds like an amazing place to work.

Imagine a company whose profitability and success grows by being mindful of its employees, where the autonomy to actively promote happiness, for yourself and others, allows your job to develop in directions almost impossible to imagine. A compelling reason to go to work each day, for sure.

Imagine a step further, if you will, where being compassionate is proven to make you happy – scientifically proven, just one of the hits arising when googling for ‘compassion, happiness, science’.

Imagine then how much fun it is when you feel happy. How freaking amazing it is! Remember happy? That visitor who is sometimes too infrequent in calling, all too elusive in the search.

Imagine if none of this needed to be imagined.

If the equation were C=H.

Let C be Compassion, let H be happiness.

Maybe the equation would look somewhat different to mine but algebra wasn’t my strong point and I could never, way back then, figure out why there were letters where I thought numbers should be.

I understand it a bit better now, recognising that the letters signify an unknown factor to be worked with.

But this equation doesn’t seem to have any unknown factors.

Compassion actually does equal happiness. Tested and proven..

The guy in the video seems like a really happy guy but not a patch on Matthieu Ricard  whose happiness quotient, apparently, is off the scale. What was he doing when it was measured? Meditating on compassion (for those who will not watch!)

I seek happiness. I seek it for me. I seek it for others. I get thrown off course at what goes on in the world and, admittedly, by my own wandering down paths that can never lead there although do help on the journey.

And I wonder how happiness for all can ever be possible as long as there are people who don’t care. Sometimes I want to give it up as a bad job.

Except it’s not a job so much as it is life.

I don’t need to work for google. I don’t need to be the Dalai Llama although I would like a blether with him.

(source)

I don’t need to carry a card declaring me the ‘Jolly Good Fellow’ (although how cool would that be!)

We could all carry one!

I just need to remember, every time I’m with someone, to be conscious of the thought, ‘I want you to be happy’.

From that one thought for their happiness, that mindful awareness, my happiness quotient grows. I feel it. I know it. Because I also know, when I’m not doing it, the type of day that can follow. I know those days well. Don’t we all?

I could waffle on for ages here, as you know, when the real Jolly Good Fellow says it so much better.

From Google engineer to emotional coach to living a life of happiness.

‘ I’m now semi-retired. My current job description at Google is: “enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace”. In my free time, I try to save the world. ‘

No one can force us to be compassionate but being happy is a compelling reason. Saving ourselves from misery by saving others first and letting that grow has more potential than all the zeros google could ever add.

I doubt if the child who coined googol and the brilliant minds who created Google itself had any idea of the impact one word, one idea, could have in conjunction with the one highway we use here. A highway so interconnected that maybe it could take us to that place we all so desperately seek – Happiness.

The power of one raised a worldwide times.