The Source of Happiness

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

For the past four years, most weekday mornings have found me on Zoom, joined by a small group of friends for a gratitude session.

Our routine kicks off with a quick meditation, followed by each of us sharing three things we are grateful for about ourselves, three aspects of life we are grateful for, and three people we are grateful for in the world.

I picked up this specific gratitude practice from sitting with the Dalai Lama in 2019. 

I still remember his deliberate words:

"The source of one’s happiness depends upon other people. We are all one."

It struck me because you could feel the Dalai Lama truly living by this belief, waking up every day at 3:00 AM to meditate for four hours, aiming to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings.

In these past four years, my gratitude list has thrown up some surprises. For instance, I might mention being thankful for the MTA—a sentiment not often heard from New Yorkers.

Yet, beyond all of this, these moments of reflection remind me that every bit of happiness in my life is intricately tied to others. 

Everything—from the clothes I’m wearing, to my job, to the friends in my life—depends on the people around me.

When you think of this concept, who in your life comes to mind? How might you share that gratitude throughout your day today?

A CREATIVE TOOL

Since many of us are focusing on our diet in the new year, I thought I would share a little hack I have been using ChatGPT for to help me meal plan. I was able to feed the algorithm my calories and macros, and it shared with me a very detailed plan!

One of the reasons I am interested in this trend is because I believe in the next five years, each of us will be able to fine tune our own personal AI assistant which will be trained on our own data to maximize certain aspects of our lives.

Super interesting right?

A PIECE OF ART

“Sorrow is Not My Name” by Ross Gay

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.

Grateful,

Michael