What does everyone want in their lives?

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

– Diane Ackerman

People want to feel like they made something of themselves in this life. Maybe it’s a legacy to leave, a child to be proud of, an empire to command, enough riches to force twitter to sellout or just a content life in a cottage off the Amalfi coast.

Nevertheless, you ask this question- ‘What is it that really matters to you in life or what do you want out of life?’ People will almost always say three things, as they are genuinely authentic about these:

• Love
• Peace
• Happiness

When you look at the emotions that go behind each dreamer, all anyone really wants is love, peace and happiness.

Now if that is true and you look at people who are working really hard in their life, people who are extremely smart, people who have worked all their life to get to a particular position in their lives, given up, traded things, sacrificed to the hilt of ignominy and have achieved success in some form- materially or however success was perceived in their mind; and let’s say they have gotten there and you ask them the same question: Do you have love, peace and happiness? The answer they would have given many years ago and the answer they would have given years later is probably the same which is a resounding and painful – NO!

So the question is to the person who is unsuccessful and to the person who is successful, both are looking for the same thing. And success in their minds or within their parameters of success. Many people look at material things as success, some look at stability as success, and others look at relationships as their success – want to be married to someone and that’s going to make me peaceful and happy, that is a success for some. And you ask them the same question: Do you have love, peace and happiness? The answer is invariably still, resounding NO. Even if they say yes, in their heart of hearts, they know it is no.

So the question is, why?

I think in my journey of realization, my response to that is ignorance. Because what people think will make them happy and peaceful and loved is not what gets them peace, happiness and love. And why do they make this mistake? Because invariably they are looking at other people and they are perceiving other people to be happy and in peace and in love. There is after all an insta-world that existed even before Instagram.

And that is the real world. When you look at others, at someone driving a fancy car, you think to yourself, that guy must have an amazing job, they must be so happy. While having a wonderful albeit expensive beyond belief cup of coffee they must be at peace and feel loved. In reality, those are figments of your own imagination that you are manufacturing. And then you start running towards these figments yourself, thinking of these as the reality. And you get there and end up experiencing what they were experiencing, which is a lot of things, but not happiness, not love and not peace.

So I think the sooner people turn inward to understand that we are ignorant about what makes us happy, the faster we get to happiness!