Happiness Is Not a Destination,
but a Verb
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.“
Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher, October 11, 1926 – January 22, 2022)
I had the great good fortune this week to listen to a talk by Mingyur Rinpoche. He is a monk of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and a very humorous and joyfully present teacher.
In his talk, he spoke about five things that are especially important to him in life:
- To do something for his health and his body.
- To give himself a purpose, a sense of meaning in life.
- To act with kindness, goodness, and compassion.
- To keep learning new things and trying new experiences.
- To engage in a spiritual practice in order to recognize his true nature.
I find this short list truly wonderful.
Unlike so many other lists we know — with the usual goals such as a good education, a good career, money, a house, and so on — this list does not describe end goals.
Mingyur Rinpoche does not say: You need health, meaning, goodness, knowledge, and enlightenment.
What he lists are verbs. Things we can do. It is about doing, not about achieving. About the path, not about a distant goal.
Why is this so important to me?
Perhaps you also know people who somehow seem to be unhappy most of the time — for whom the glass is always half empty and the world feels like a constant struggle.
Why is it that some people never really seem to be happy?
Of course, there are many individual reasons. Illnesses that severely limit one’s abilities, or psychological burdens such as depression. Everyone understands that.
And yet, I often encounter healthy people who are nevertheless unhappy, while — paradoxically — some physically ill people radiate deep inner contentment.
All of these people naturally have a thousand reasons why they are unhappy. A common tendency often becomes visible:
They chase after happiness.
They cannot be happy now, but if they achieve this one thing — the money, the promotion, the house, the perfect body, the respect — then, they believe, their life will finally be in order.
They say:
“I will be happy when I get the promotion.”
“I will be happy when I have paid off the house.”
“I will be happy when I retire.”
“I will be happy when people finally respect me.”
How difficult it is to tell them:
What you are chasing will not give you what you believe it will give you.
Because when they reach their goal, when they obtain that one thing, there is always the next. Always.
The finish line moves. You think you are almost there — and then you look up, and it is farther away than when you started.
In this way, many people spend their entire lives running toward a finish line that does not exist and never has.
An acquaintance of mine used to be very afraid that he would never be able to afford a house. Today, he lives in a very beautiful house that is fully paid off. He thought he would feel free. He thought he could finally relax.
Do you know what happened?
He began worrying about the next thing: retirement savings, rising healthcare costs.
What if he and his family can no longer afford it all? What if this? What if that?
The fear did not disappear when his circumstances changed. It simply found something new to attach itself to.
There is no finish line.
You get one thing — the next one appears. You solve one problem — another arises.
That is life.
So, if you are waiting for everything to be perfect in order to be happy, you will probably wait forever. Because it will most likely never be perfect. Something will always be missing or not the way you wish it to be.
Those who are unhappy keep chasing. They keep comparing.
And then there are other people.
These people carry a lightness within themselves. An inner peace.
They also work and have goals in life. But achieving their goals does not determine their happiness. For them, happiness is not a fleeting high, but an inner contentment — a calm underlying state.
They are not trying to prove anything to anyone.
They live.
They are curious.
They keep learning new things.
They enjoy what lies before them.
They wake up with gratitude.
It is not the money. It is not even the family — although all of that helps.
It is the question of whether you have made peace with yourself. Whether you have stopped chasing and started being.
That is why I consider Mingyur Rinpoche’s short list to be so important. It is about doing, not about an end goal.
And I would like to add one more thing that the Rinpoche may have considered so self-evident that he did not mention it explicitly:
Doing always happens now. In this moment. The supposed achievement of an end goal always lies in the future.
Happiness is to be found in this moment.
Not someday.
Everything we do, we do now.
What is happening now is the path of life. There is no other.
It is about finding peace and contentment in the doing of this moment — not about someday reaching a goal that promises us happiness.
Try it. Yes, now.
Take a deep breath into your belly.
Feel the energy flowing into you.
Breathe out slowly and sense the calm within you.
How does that feel?
Breathing — the doing of this moment.
Good, isn’t it?
You only ever breathe now. You cannot breathe for the future.
This happiness you may be feeling right now is here now.
And it is your freedom to experience it again in every moment.
As long as I believe that my happiness depends on external circumstances, I am giving away my freedom.
True freedom is needing nothing outside of yourself in order to be happy within.
Happiness is not a reward at the end of the path. It is the way we walk.
With love,
Heiko
