In Ichiro Kishimi‘s ’The courage to be disliked‘ there is an interesting sentence that comes to me over and over. It goes something like this, or that is how I understood.

“Happiness and self worth comes from being beneficial to the community, by being of use to someone else.”

This is a profound and deep idea in a world where time and again people feel that they are being taken advantage of by others.

I have realized that, many times while I try to do things that are expected of me (in my different roles as an individual, at work and life) I cannot pin point how I was beneficial to my community or to someone else.

Community can also be our fraternity, society, groups, organizations and so on.

It is interesting… Maybe I was useful but I did not know. Maybe doing my responsibilities does not count as being useful. It is just expected of me.

Maybe the question is how many times did I go outside my comfort zone and boundaries of responsibility and really be useful to others. How many times did I find time to do anything else for others that I was not expected to do in the first place.

Maybe we become so focused on doing things that we forget being useful. We forget that happiness truly depends on being useful.

A weekly check on what made us beneficial to the community and of use to someone else could add value.

I write this today because this week I felt I was useful in two instances a total of 2 hours out of 40. And I know every week won’t find me this useful.

This week I am happy 😁