Vietnamese meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh said, “When you have a toothache you think that you will be happy when the toothache is gone. But when you don’t have the toothache you are still not happy.”
Because when the toothache goes, something else comes up. There is always something missing or unwanted in life.
The enemy of happiness is not our life problems but our idea of happiness, which typically, is a set of preconditions – “When I have A, B, and C, I will be happy.”
The idea of happiness is just another toothache conundrum.
And here is the irony: You know this and I know this. And yet, we still keep chasing the idea of happiness.
And while we are busy in this chase, life just goes by. This is our tragedy. And the biggest tragedy is that we know it is a tragedy – yet we can’t stop ourselves from doing it.
– Rajan