Happiness — The Real Work Is in Unlearning What Made Us Forget

Have you noticed how we now study happiness as if it were a lost art? There are endless books, research papers, and workshops teaching us how to be mindful, how to live in the moment, and how to optimise our capacity to feel joy. Science has become the guide for something that was once instinctive.

It makes me wonder — have we wandered so far from ourselves that we now need to schedule the most natural human emotions into our daily lives?

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s incredible that research now proves how essential nature is to our wellbeing. In a world defined by urbanisation, where land is becoming an increasingly precious asset, this evidence helps city planners and policymakers understand that people need nature to function and to recharge. It gives us the language to say, “Yes, this matters. Humans aren’t machines.”

Yet isolation — once hardly a concern — has grown so serious that the United Nations now urges developed nations to take social connection seriously. Loneliness has been found to shorten lives, and retirement villages have become a kind of privilege for those who managed to save enough to enjoy peace later in life. It’s in these spaces that connection finally happens, among people who have reached a stage where they can pause long enough to truly see one another.

What about creating spaces or events that help us put our phones down — where real conversations can breathe again? It’s no longer the early 2000s, when owning a mobile phone was a luxury. The challenge now isn’t getting one, but knowing how to step away from it. How can we, myself included, find our way back to being fully present?

Where did we go wrong? When did we become slaves to consumerism — to its shiny distractions and emotional by-products — to the point where happiness now needs to be studied, cultivated, implemented, and scaled up like a business plan? Maybe the real question we need to ask together is: when did happiness become something that had to be taught?

If you’re not sure what I mean, just look at children, especially those under four. You don’t see them reading books about how to be happy. They simply are. Happiness flows through them effortlessly. Maybe the real work isn’t about learning how to be happy, but unlearning whatever made us forget.