Here’s a conversation I just had with my 9 year-old son, sitting in a café out in a village 30km from Madrid.
Dad: I’m writing a book about happiness, what do you think I should right about?
Son: I don’t know.
– Well, what do you think the secret to happiness is? What makes you most happy?
– Playing basketball!
– And why does that make you so happy?
– I love it!
– OK, what else can you tell me about it?
– It’s a nice sport. It makes me feel like I’m the king of the world! Like I’m the person who’s having the most fun in the whole city!
And here we are, us adults, writing books about happiness and trying to analyse it all, and all we have to do is to find the thing that makes us feel like we are the king or queen of the world, like the person who’s having the most fun in the whole city!
Someone sent me an email recently with a great quote in the footer:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
Exploring new streets and landscapes makes me come alive. Crossing the back roads of this extraordinary country makes me come alive. Riding my bike makes me come alive – in fact it makes me feel like I’m 9 again, like my son, and that’s probably the secret to it all.
What makes you come alive and feel like you’re a 9 year old who’s having the most fun in the whole city?
Notes from Ben 
Learning and speaking Spanish, reading, doing yoga, walking, riding my bike, and if I could do it in Madrid, I’d not only come alive, I’d be high in the sky. 🙂
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Perhaps you’ll do some of those things in Madrid one day, if only on a holiday here!
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Exploring new places; noticing and photographing the tiny secrets of the world.
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