Do Things Have to Be So Complicated?

In one sense, life is quite simple. As humans we all basically start out as little bits of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen...the building blocks of life. These four basic elements bond together in different ways to form more complex molecular compounds that make up most of our bodies. For example, hydrogen and oxygen (also known as water) bond to make up almost 60 percent of our bodies overall...and 70 percent of our brains, 80 percent of our blood and 90 percent of our lungs. Before you know it, enough molecules and compounds bond together to form something called amino acids...the building blocks of proteins. Throw in a few fat molecules (lipids) to help develop a membrane around the molecules (now bonded in the form of amino acids, proteins and other stuff) and you suddenly have a cell wall. This cell wall creates an inside world and an outside world for the molecules that somehow bonded with each other. At this point, new bonds begin to form and existing bonds begin to break apart inside the cell wall. As these new molecular bonds form inside the cell wall, they store energy...and when existing molecular bonds break apart, energy is released. By the way, this process of storing and releasing energy is called metabolism. We're getting pretty close to life at this point. Technically, we only need three things to classify something as living:

1. Metabolism
2. Boundaries (life needs boundaries - such as a cell wall - to separate "in here" and "out there")
3. The ability to make copies of itself 

Other molecules inside the cell wall (called nucleotides) form into twisted ladder-like chains called DNA and, as Archimedes said when he stepped into his bath, "Eureka!!!" Our internal copy machines are in place and ready...and we are ready to get serious about life. The first cell copies itself, the resulting two cells do the same, then four new cells do the same, etc, etc, etc. All the cells are pretty much the same when they start out, but then something even more amazing happens. They migrate to different parts of our newly forming bodies and differentiate. Some morph into brain cells, some into liver cells, some into heart cells, and so forth and so on until we end up with all we need (if we are fortunate) to sustain life, get an education, overuse fossil fuel, get a mortgage, get on junk mail and e-mail spam lists, run up some credit card debt, create a worldwide financial crisis, etc.   

Ok, let's stop here and think about it. All this happens - you happen, life happens - because four basic elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen) somehow bond in different ways. Understanding everything about how these bonds ultimately are formed can take you down three fascinating paths: the path of spiritual knowledge, the path of scientific knowledge, or...if you are willing to ignore Descartes' separation of these paths (as I am), the path where spirituality and science merge. But here's my simple lesson for the day in all of this: If it only takes four basic elements to make us and sustain life, why does it take so much to make us happy and sustain happiness? Here's a possible answer: It doesn't really take that many things or that much to make us happy. Sometimes we just think it does!

Here's my suggestion. Learn from mother nature and stick with the following simple four-element plan for generating happiness:

1. Every day, think of the activity that creates the most joy in your life...then do it.
2. Every day, think of the activity that kills the most joy in your...then don't do it. 
3. Repeat step one above for the rest of your life. 
4. Repeat step two above for the rest of your life. 

One joy-generating activity is enough to get started on this plan. I am lucky. Currently, there are 26 items on my list of joy-generating activities. Most of them cost little or no money. The activity that struck me as most desirable today was writing (yeah...unlike some people, I actually like to write). Now that I am almost finished with this blog, I'm moving on to the next activity on my list. On a good day, I can make it through many joy-generating activities. Yesterday, I participated in 15 of the activities on my list...so, it was a very good day! Of course, make sure the activities that creates joy in your life are appropriate and good for you and others in your environment in the long run. Follow this simple plan, get plenty of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and life should work out fine for you. Good luck!

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive. His new book, Being Productive: Learning to Get More Done With Less Effort, scheduled for release in early December is now available for preorder.

Comments

[Cristin Lind]

What a coincidence...I made a list of things that bring me joy two weeks ago, and was surprised to see that all of them required very little money or time. All they required was a very small amount of effort AND the presence to appreciate them. Writing was not on the list, though!