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When I got to experience the things that other people look up to,
I always asked myself the same question:

Is that it?

I obsessed over many things. I believed that once I got to them, I would be happy.
In that endless search for happiness, I got to taste many of the things I dreamed about.

And every time I was disappointed.

I thought once I reached them, I would be happy.

You get them — and it makes you happy for a week or two.

Before you know it, you don’t want to take another picture.
You don’t wash it as well anymore.
You stop noticing these things.

It’s fun, but sooner or later it’s just there.

And again you ask yourself:

Is that it?
It can’t be, right?

I tried looking for happiness everywhere.

Then one day I saw boys digging a hole in a sandpit.
They looked very happy.
They didn’t have jets and cars.
They had shovels and a dream.

I just knew they weren’t asking themselves about the purpose of their doing.
They didn’t create a detailed goal, plan, and deadline.

They just did.

Their focus wasn’t on the goal.
It was on the doing.
They were not asking about the sense of life.
They didn’t care.

Just doing, being in the moment — and they were as happy as a person can get.
Not that quick happiness.
The real kind.

I can confidently say that life doesn’t get better than sitting at a bonfire with your boys, or going on another adventure or mission.
I have never experienced anything that gave me peace and made me fulfilled and happy like that.

None of my victories, achievements, material possessions.

All of that comes on top and is very good to have.
But without your boys, all of it becomes almost senseless.

I imagined losing everything and sitting under a bridge with your boys and laughing about how you lost it all.
That’s as good as life gets.

And the same for sitting and laughing in a private jet, calculating how many lifetimes you would need to work at that low-wage job you used to work at to afford that jet, joking about how the matrix tried to enslave you all and failed.

Sitting wounded in a battlefield trench, bullets flying overhead, everybody tense, and then one of you starts laughing at the situation you got yourself into and making jokes, uncontrollably tearing careless cheering through the night sky.

And as long as the right, loyal, close men, the brothers, are there, what’s happening doesn’t really matter.
All of that comes secondary.

I haven’t experienced anything better than that, ever.

-Yanni