For my latest podcast this week, I sat down with bestselling author and thought leader, Arthur Brooks. Arthur is the president emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute.
For over an hour, we discussed a variety of topics centered around a popular topic of global conversation:
Happiness.
When I think about the subject, I think about an unforgettable trip I made to Jakarta, Indonesia, many years ago for a talk. If you’ve never been there, it has some of the worst smog of any city in the world. My eyes burned, and it was hard to breathe after being there for a short time. Traffic is notorious. Imagine Los Angeles and New York combined and multiply all that by a factor of 10. The living conditions in many places are deplorable.
I was sitting in the back of the luxury sedan that was sent for me. Part of the route to my hotel took a dirt road through a run-down section of Jakarta. Somewhere on that broken, dusty road, the Lord spoke to my heart. “Look out the window.”
I saw about six boys in torn clothes playing with Coke teeth in a black pool of water. “Those poor kids,” I thought.
Until I saw the smiles on their faces.
Despite their circumstances, they had fun, floating their cans in the shallow water.
As we rolled by them, I heard the Lord say in my heart, “I see their joy; what’s your problem?”
Arthur Brooks and I discussed what he called the “macronutrients” of happiness – joy, satisfaction, and purpose.
He sets up the conversation with a fascinating and poignant story about eavesdropping on an intimate conversation he overheard on an airplane.
Although he did not know it at the time (the man was sitting behind him), the gentleman was a hero of Brooks, a brilliant individual seen in the world in a high light. But this man trusted his wife that maybe the world would be better without him.
“I had a window into his soul and I thought, okay, is he an outlier or is there some correlation behind the success addicted, super successful workaholic and the inability later in life to achieve happiness? ” Brooks pondered.
I hope you will “eavesdrop” on our conversation – I promise you will be more motivated and inspired than Arthur’s plane incident.
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