About the Pursuit
of Happiness
Written & narrated by Zaheer Merali · published Sep 2024 in this book
There’s something different that happens when we listen vs read. It’s primal: you learned who you are via sound, well before you learned to read. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the next 20 minutes in peace, with no obligation.
I wrote this for my children. The expression of my decade-long journey to understand happiness. Fuelled by love’s desire to spare them unnecessary suffering. Tempered by understanding that each life journey is unique and will play out as it must. Grounded in a universal insight.
The pursuit of happiness gets in the way of you being happy.
Drop the pursuit and you’ll be happy.
Permanently.
For a few people, there is instant perception on reading this insight, and they are ready to apply it. If you need more convincing, keep reading and allow the words to do their work. Keep an open mind and investigate for yourself if what’s written is true.
“Don’t go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path… and leave a trail.”
I took a path less traveled. Here’s my trail.
What is happiness, and why should you care?
Words can mean different things to each of us. So let’s start with the simple, universal understanding of happiness as a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment. Keep that in mind as you read.
We all seek eternal happiness. We are hardwired to do so, as are all living beings. But to most of us, a permanent state of happiness feels elusive. It comes and goes. And so we’re constantly on the hunt for it, consciously or subconsciously. We learn to strive for the things that make us happy and to avoid what makes us unhappy.
On the surface, this may not seem like an issue. And if everybody seems to be in the same boat, who wants to jump out and test the waters? That’s why I’m writing this. Because I jumped out, tested the waters, and found something quite different than I had been taught. I had to go through a couple of major life crises to figure this out. I’m sharing my experience to save you the suffering.
I know it works because I’ve done it. You can choose to apply it to your life, or discover it for yourself. All paths lead to the same realization. You get to pick how long it takes, and how much you suffer along the way.
Surely people have figured this out already?
That’s what I thought when I started. And no: they haven’t, despite thousands of books. Amazon alone has 23,000 titles about happiness. If they solved the problem, more people would be happy and fewer books would be published.
Instead, we have lower overall happiness and greater happiness inequality across ages, geographies and genders. The divide is starkest in young people in developed countries. The USA fell out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report began in 2012, driven by a large drop among Americans under 30. In Canada there’s a 50-spot difference between people over 60 (8th) and under 30 (58th). (Gallup et al., 2024)
Over ten years I read hundreds of books, researched journals, interviewed experts. I explored music, poetry, ancient rituals, plant medicines, and every kind of mind-altering substance at least once. There’s no silver bullet. But some people left clues, which led me to a magic key.
Everything we learn about happiness is rooted in an assumption that it is a state to be pursued: sought and achieved through effort. This creates an inescapable paradox: if happiness is a state to be pursued, and our lives are constantly changing, then it can only ever be momentary and forever elusive. A never-ending treadmill.
It’s your lived experience too: happiness followed by unhappiness, always with an ending. A constant pursuit. A perpetual lack. It’s unsolvable because we keep looking from the same limited perspective. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I discovered a way to liberate myself from the problem entirely: to get rid of the hammer and the nail.
Stand on Earth on a clear day and the sky appears blue and solid. At night, and from every other vantage point in the universe, that same sky doesn’t appear at all: it is infinitely deep and dark, punctuated by billions of celestial bodies invisible from Earth during the day.
Neither is right or wrong. They describe appearances from different perspectives. We’ve been coming at happiness from a flawed perspective that creates perpetual pursuit. Let’s replace it: so you don’t spend your life building ladders against the wrong walls.
So what’s this fresh perspective?
The pursuit of happiness gets in the way of you being happy.
Drop the pursuit and you’ll be happy.
Permanently.
Pursuing happiness makes you unhappy. Let me set some context for why I set out to figure this out.
Ten years ago I seemed happy: married, healthy children, a good job, lots of friends, a nice house, a fancy car. All the boxes ticked. Then everything changed in one crazy year. I broke rules and made mistakes. I was separated; my children were now living five hours away. I lost my job, my friends, and all the goodies I’d accumulated.
With a kind therapist, I began to figure out what had gone wrong. I realized I’d been unhappy for a long time: I just didn’t notice, distracted by the check boxes. It made me wonder: do I actually understand what it means to be happy? What I discovered is so simple, yet it changed my experience of life completely.
To see the truth clearly, you need to remove the false.
Happiness is a state to be pursued in the future, achieved through acquisition or addition: like a developer building a subdivision on top of land in its natural state.
Being happy is your natural state, realized by subtraction: like a sculptor carving a statue from a block of marble.
As a baby, you were in this natural state almost all the time - even when you cried (that’s communication, not suffering) - you just weren’t aware of it. In deep sleep, you’re in this natural state, unaware. In flow - playing, creating, helping someone in need - you are happy. It’s the same natural state.
The evidence is inescapable, but our attention is drawn away from reality and onto distractions. Most of your conscious waking life is spent pursuing a state that exists naturally, without pursuit. After any disturbance, you are hardwired to return to it: a psychological equilibrium. The gyroscopic centre of your conscious experience.
Happiness is the unconstrained expression of your natural state in each moment you experience.
If it’s your natural state, why aren’t you happy all the time?
Because you are taught something that gets in the way. From birth, we teach you to desire things we think will make you happy, and fear things we think will make you unhappy. There’s nothing malicious: we’re doing our best, applying what we were taught. But our whole civilization is geared toward pursuing happiness this way. An acquired habit, reinforced by what I call the 5 Cs.
- Conditioning You’re raised with traditions and messaging suggesting happiness requires external achievement, possessions, and validation.
- Comparison You evaluate your worth against external standards. Culture prizes competition, achievement, status.
- Confusion Fear-based messaging creates anxiety, clouding perception and telling you you’re deficient or flawed.
- Conforming Your psychology is nudged to identify with peer groups and mimic them.
- Consumption You’re inundated with messages linking happiness to accumulation, wealth, and status symbols.
You have been taught and programmed to believe that you are not enough, that you are not worthy, and that you must constantly strive to achieve happiness.
No one can claim exclusive credit. Its roots lie in beliefs and traditions we inherit through language and culture. The modern, amplified incarnation points to Edward L. Bernays - likely the most influential person you’ve never heard of - who rebranded his uncle Sigmund Freud’s techniques for advertising and PR. His 1929 “Torches of Freedom” campaign framed smoking as female empowerment; cigarette sales to women grew from 5% to 33%.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society… we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” - Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
Hang on, you’re telling me I can be happy all the time?
Yes. Your natural state is happy. Unbroken. Unblemished. Pure. I promise you.
From birth, we teach you to seek and desire things for happiness, instead of showing you it exists naturally in each moment. Each desire or fear creates a screen over your natural state. When you acquire the thing, the screen disappears and your natural state shines through - briefly - before it’s masked by more screens. Your experience becomes a lifetime of effort chasing momentary states. That’s the trap: a never-ending set of desires rooted in one unquestioned belief: that you must acquire, pursue, or strive for happiness.
It’s like a solar eclipse that won’t go away. Your natural state of happiness is the sun. Your desires and fears are the moon, covering it up. At first it’s easy for happiness to shine through. As we accumulate desires and fears, the moon gradually covers the sun: until we can’t experience it without ever more extreme attempts to remove what’s in the way. More money, more status, more power. More, more, more.
Real happiness is free. We pay dearly for the knockoff version.
So, what do you need to do to achieve this happiness?
Remember: you realize this natural state through subtraction, not addition. The most important thing is to perceive the truth - being happy is your natural state - and then apply that understanding to every moment you encounter. The influence of culture is strong and can block your perception. A few things I found helpful:
- Observe your desires. Your needs and your wants. Write them down. How many are truly yours? How many are inherited from influences around you?
- Track “should / shouldn’t” and “must / mustn’t”: in your thoughts and your speech. The 5 Cs work through those words.
- Notice the content you consume. Media is the fuel for your desires. Go one week without it and watch how quickly your perspective shifts.
What to expect?
Being happy is your natural state. It is the manifestation of a consciousness where you feel whole: where you have no desire for anything other than what is present in this moment. The only reason you don’t perceive it now is a belief in what you’ve been told about needing to acquire, pursue, or strive for happiness.
Nothing may change outwardly in your life. But this perspective shift changes everything about how you experience it. It is the difference between:
The same four words: opposite meanings. One traps you in an endless search. The other brings instant happiness no matter what you’re doing.
An eternal state of happiness is your birthright. Forget everything you’ve been taught, and explore this for yourself. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed by what you discover.
Readers
Concise and to the point — a fast, interesting read. I loved the sentiment, and you are so right. Wise words indeed.
Many people struggle for years to search for an answer to their suffering. In just a few pages, Zaheer gifts us timeless wisdom. Save yourself some time and absorb these insights right now.
A beautiful reminder of how simple happiness can be. Grounding, thought-provoking, and deeper the more you contemplate it. I’ve read it multiple times and keep finding golden nuggets.
Short, whole, and clear. It has the potential to shift perception on a large scale for the better. Thank you for sharing this with me and the world. ❤️
His insights cut through the noise of modern life, revealing the simplicity of what it means to be happy. Stop chasing happiness — embrace it as our natural state.
Permission to let go of all the striving and comparing. It’s like a mirror reflecting back something you knew all along but forgot. Clarity and peace, in a world constantly telling us we’re not enough.
If you want to ask me about my experience, or share your perspective, I welcome it.
Contact me