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As a boy I did what made me happy and it wasn’t always congruent with good learning. As a teenager I did the same, but I found that certain things that were educational did make me happy: playing guitar, lifting weights, and physics class for example. It was only when I discovered bliss in meditation, that the happiness and educational reward systems fully aligned. The difficulty was that for the longest time I was only interested in having a repeat experience. More bliss in meditation. Yet things didn’t go the way I wanted them to go. I never really found the bliss I was looking for again. At least not while my primary priority was to find it. What did ultimately happen though is that I started thinking during meditation. I started thinking about all sorts of things, but the main thoughts of interest were the ones concerned with connecting dots from philosophy books that I had read.

I need to take a step back here. I’d like to mention that before this alignment of happiness and education occurred I was a super enthusiastic piano player. Piano made me happy and there’s no arguing that it’s not educational. I even wanted to be a professional jazz pianist. However things didn’t really go this way either.

Another step back. I came from a culture that didn’t concern itself primarily with education. There were certain things that were simply valued more. Entertainment – not to say there’s anything wrong with entertainment or that it can’t be educational to the highest degree – parties – again can be educational. However my point is that there was like this duality of going to school or doing work and then unplugging. Education wasn’t what we did for fun, it was what we needed to do to succeed and be good.

I’m grateful to have come from this culture because I think it made me less rigid and to be honest there are some really interesting things going on in the circles that I encountered throughout my formative years. There’s a certain rigidity that might miss out on learning about different varietals of red wine, for example.

I’m also lucky to have travelled to India and China just after having graduated university, for this what formative in a completely different way. It was only after travelling to India that I found bliss in meditation. Getting back to it: post-experiential bliss I had this mad craving to experience it again, almost recklessly. I didn’t care about anything other than a repeat experience and it actually deflated me a staggering amount. I suffered socially, in work, in health: basically in all aspects of life except for meditation. That is until, like I mentioned, I started thinking. I’m not sure what was a better gift: the initial bliss or the thinking that later ensued, but it’s clear that they both contribute significantly to my happiness, and they also sustain me.

It’s one thing to learn because we’re taught at a young age that it’s important, but it’s a whole other thing to find that learning provides what’s needed to keep going when it feels like nothing else will. And I know that loads of people have very different experiences with learning, I’m just providing a glimpse of what my experience has been like.

I think when it comes to value systems there are a lot of old ones concerned with doing good or being virtuous. The newer ones seem to be more geared towards success in one field or another, whether it’s business, mindfulness, or something else entirely. I’m really just writing this article to share an alternative viewpoint. We’re all trying to be happy, but what if instead of a goal, happiness was a teacher. Instead of trying to fit into some box and trying to make it work, start with doing what makes you happy, and let the happiness figure out how to be congruent with the box.

I know this might sound like a cliché. Maybe I’m not writing anything original at all. Chances are I’m not. A part of me is absolutely certain that this is completely unoriginal, but I want anyone who reads this to know my story. The happiness formula works. It might not feel like it’s working because there are so many things that can pull us down in life, but I don’t think it works any less well than any competing system. However human beings are hard-wired to seek happiness. Why not let our natural hard-wiring take over.