A Happier World Starts With a Happier You

Two parts manifesto, one part invitation.

There are almost 8-billion people living on this planet right now. Nearly 8-billion unique stories are being written simultaneously. The details of each one of those stories are unique, but the stories are not essentially different from the ones that you or I are writing. We all share the common human desires to avoid pain, experience pleasure, and know what it feels like to be appreciated, comfortable, and safe. We all encounter breathtaking beauty, gut-wrenching pain, and fall in love with things that have no permanence.

All while being held by invisible forces to a ball of rock that’s shooting through space at 67,000 MPH. Whoa.

Another thing that you and I likely share is that we’ve both spent a lot of time trying to answer some big questions in life. Questions like “What am I doing here? Wait, what’s that person over there doing? Who’s that voice in my head that sounds like me, and why are they so mean? What’s the meaning of all this… and WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT IT?!?!!?”

During my search for answers, I’ve found some truly astounding methods for getting closer to happiness and fulfillment. But I’ve also encountered what seems like an endless ocean of baseless opinions and discordant beliefs. It sometimes feels like we’re trying to learn the rules of a complex game but were given the wrong instructions.

I’m a big fan of people. I think we’re beautiful, fascinating, and capable of truly marvelous and extraordinary things. But we’re also capable of bringing some really gruesome stuff into being. The beneficial things are an expression of the best in us, and the destructive ones are what ignorance, fear, and confusion produce. When we allow fear and ignorance to make our decisions for us, we bring misery and suffering into the world, and misery and suffering deplete the valuable energy we could be investing into building stuff that we’re proud of.

Happy people tend to be productive people, and personally, I’d like to live in a world that’s filled with a lot more happy people. An ingredient that moves us closer to that potential is clarity. It’s increasing our individual and collective understanding of what’s happening in and around us, and of how to work with it all in the most beneficial way. 

One of the quickest ways to accomplish this is to observe and learn from each other’s experiences.

I don’t know how all the pieces of the ”life puzzle” fit together, but I’ve had to figure out some really difficult parts of it. When I was born, my parents started teaching me that the world was about to be destroyed by a jealous, murderous god and that it was my job to appease him so I could survive. They taught me that I had no future on this planet and that I shouldn’t worry about “worldly” things like security or education. They taught me that I didn’t matter and that the only reason I was here was to play this god’s game.

In addition to being raised a Jehovah’s Witness, I spent the first many years of my life being physical, emotionally, and sexually abused. And not long after I finally escaped that life and began to heal and establish myself as an independent person in the world, my body started expressing a severe neurological disorder that’s similar to Parkinson’s Disease.

I don’t look back on any of this with regret. It was hard, but I can’t imagine a better environment for learning about intention and continuing forward despite the ignorance and unconsciousness of others. So while I would never claim to have all the answers to life (because that’s crazy-talk), I do have some, and I’m passionate about sharing what I’ve learned so that it might give strength to others.

When we learn from the experiences of others we can avoid having to go down some of the same paths they did. Maybe something I know will help you, or maybe just hearing that someone else has had similar experiences will give you strength and help you feel understood. For me, this is one way to create beauty from ugliness, and meaning from the senseless and grotesque. That’s very valuable to me.

The work that you’ll find on Hug the Universe is about exploring what’s possible. It’s about refining (and where necessary, changing) our beliefs, habits, and perspectives. It’s about better understanding the nature of human mental and emotional capacities. It’s about using these powerful abilities to benefit ourselves, the people we love, and the planet as a whole. It’s about not giving up. It’s about choosing the life we’ll live instead of just inheriting the one that was implied by our environment. It’s about trying to find and understand truth. 

At its core, my work is about intentionally creating our greatest masterpieces. And what is that? It’s you and me. You are the greatest masterpiece that you’ll ever make, just as I am the greatest masterpiece that I’ll ever make. And I think something as important as who we are choosing to be and what we’ll leave behind demands the utmost care, consideration, and presence.

When you and I live more fully, more honestly, and more intentionally, we increase the likelihood that we’ll experience great joy in our lives. When the joy in our life increases, we naturally share it with the people around us. And when enough people do this, what started as ripples with a few individuals can grow into a giant tidal wave of joy.

Tidal waves of joy crush the suffering and despair that are all too common in our world, and I’d like to live in a world where suffering and despair are extinct.

The S.S. Despair hates tidal waves of joy.

None of this is a small goal, and it won’t happen overnight or through the efforts of any one person — but it can happen. It starts with people like you and me.

If you’d like to join me on this journey, sign up for the Hug the Universe mailing list. You’ll be notified when new articles and other fun nuggets of goodness are published.

Thank you for reading. I look forward to all the fun adventures ahead of us. :)

Until next time… be kind to yourself, to each other, and go make your dreams real.

Question for you...

What is something that you've learned about life that you most want other people to know? What do you think would change the world if more people understood it? I'd love to hear about it in a comment below. 👇🏻