What do we want?

Love is one the strangest thing humans have ever experienced. You cannot hold it in hands or measure it with ruler or buy is online and yet it has starred wars and ended wars and inspired masterpieces and convinced people that driving three hours just to spend thity minutes with some one is somehow a perfectly reasonable idea.

As ten people what love is and they you will get ten different answers. A poet might call the language of the soul. A scientist might explain it as a cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin, seratonin and other a other few chemicals making your brian temporarily lose its ability to think logically m your grandmother would say " It is making sure that someone has eaten". Somehow all of them are right.

Emotionally live is the feeling of finding a place where you don't have to perform m it is the releif of being understood without needing to explain every little thought in your head. If is laughing so hard with your stomach that it hurts sitting in comfortable silence without feeling awkward or instictively reaching for your phone because they are the first person you want to tell when something good or terrible happens.

Physically love is fascinating. Your heart does not actually " Skip a beat " but your body certainly behaves differently.bykur brains releases chemicals that make you feel happier and calmber and more connected. A hug can lower stress harmones. Holding someone's hand can reduce anxiety. Even looking into the eyes of someone you deeply care about can activate parts of the brain associated with reward and trust. It turns out the phrase " Love heals " is not entirely poetic and biology agreed more than we expect.

Philosophically love is even more intresting. It forces us to stop living for ourselves. Suddenly another person's happiness matter almost as much as our own. We begin making decisions with " we " instead of " me ". Love quietly teaches empathy, patience, sacrifice and forgiveness not because anyone hands is a textbook bit because carrying someone natiralochanges the way we see the world.

What is funny is that love is not limited to resources. We live our parents in our way our closest friends in another and our pets in another. Some people love books and rainy afternoon and old songs or the smell of coffee more passionately than they live most humans. Live has hundreds of different accents bit somehow we recognise every one of them.

Now imagine a world without love. No parents staying awake with a sick child. No friends showing up when life falls apart. No Grandparents saving your childhood drawing. No teachers beleiving in students who don't believe in themselves. No artists creating music because someone broken their heart. No people adapting abonded animals. No wedding and no lullaby and no inside joke and no " text me when you reach home"

The world probably function. People would go to work and eat dinner and pay bills and catch trains in time. But it feels mechanical like a perfectly build machine with no music playing inside it. And that is why love matters so much. It does not only makes life happier but also makes us human.

Happiness is probably the most chased thing in the world. And ironically the harder we cause it the more it seems to run away. We convince ourselves that we will finally be happy after getting that promotion or buying that phone or losing kilos or graduating or meeting " the one ". Then we reach that milestonex celebrate for a few days and our brain quietly move the finish line somewhere else.

It is almost like happiness enjoys playing hide and seek. Ask people what happiness is and you will hear wildly different answer. For one person it is traveling the world. Dor another it is spending time with the family. Some fimd happiness in winning competition while others find in watering plants or watching the rain from the window. That is what makes happiness di fascinating. It has no universal shape. It changes from person to person and even from one stage of life to another.

Emotionally happiness in not endless excitement or constant laughter. It is much more quieter than that. It the feeling of contentment with life even for a brief moment. It is laughing with with your friends until your cheek hurt. Finishing a book you could read a hundred times. Hearing your favourite song unexpectedly. Saying the same word as your friend at the same time without knowing.

Philosophically happiness raises an interesting question: It is something we find or something we create?

Many ancient thinkers believed happiness was not about pleasure at all. They argued that true happiness comes form living with purpose and building meaningful relationship and becoming the best version of yourself. And modern psychology agrees.

One of the biggest myth about happiness is that successful people are always happier. In reality happiness and success often work in opposite direction. People who are generally happier tend to build stronger relationship and solve problems more effectively and recover from setbacks more effectively. Happiness is not always the reward at the end of the journey. It can also be the girl that keeps the journey going.

Now imagine a world without happiness. Birthday would be just dates. Music would become background noise. Sunsets would simply be change in the lighting. Children would stop laughing for no reason. Victories would feel empty. We would survive but survive is not the same as living.

May be happiness was never meant to be a permenent destination. May be it is the collection of small moments that reminds us life is worth experiencing. And perhaps that is enough. After all if happiness lasted forever we might stop recognising goe beautiful it is when it arrives.