Why Does Happiness Lie in Human Connection?

The nicest thing about these gatherings is that so much comes out when we come together; together we can discover, in an incredible way, things we couldn't find alone. That's why we're very excited today. Let me start with our first question: to reach and achieve the goals we want in life, what should we change? Should we change, or should life?

First I need to think: what is my desire, and how can I make it happen? For that there needs to be an environment aimed at that desire, so that I can change within it and reach my goals.

Yes, change really starts with the person. We usually don't think so; but even when we make a tiny change in our lives we can see an incredible response. People usually take the easy way out and say "let others change, not me." Yet the key lies in our own transformation, and this transformation is much more powerful when done together.

A right community means a right environment. Are my goals aimed at my desires? Because my talents are hidden in my desires; I need to discover what I want. Is my goal aimed at this, and am I in a right environment? Because I'm the average of the people I spend time with. That's why the environment is very important for reaching a goal.

Yes, a person is the average of their environment. If there's something I want in life, I should be inside whichever community will take me there: if I'm a physicist, with physicists; if I'm a businessperson, with businesspeople; whatever department I'm a student in, with those students. If I chat all day in an empty café with someone who does nothing, will I become a physicist? Will inspiration suddenly come? No, I won't become anything. That's why we need to make plans. Social media is very bad in this respect; scrolling videos for hours is unfortunately ruining us. As young people we need to drop such things and lock onto a goal.

The stronger the bond within that community, the stronger my reaching my goal will be.

People usually say "life dragged me here," but they start ending up next to people with the same desire: book lovers, people who share the same hobby. It's as if life brings them together. When a person feels they're inside that field, that they belong there, and the more they talk about what they want to do there, about it being the most important thing in their lives, the greater the effect. If one person pulls a load with one unit of force, when ten people pull it, not ten units but a greater force emerges; everyone gets less tired and more power comes out. This is an incredible feature of nature. Today people even pay money to come together with people who share the same goal, to gain a "network." This isn't something we invented; it's a path all of humanity uses. So the environment really is important. Being together with people who share your goal, with whom you can connect in the right way, who understand you, will take you to success in any case.

So to reach my goal I need to be in the environment that will bring me one step closer to it. And my goal depends on my desires: what do I want? We need to think about this; that's the whole problem. We're living such a life that, say my field is physics or chemistry and I'm going to focus on my lessons; something I see on social media immediately grabs my attention, I turn on the TV, I feel like going to a concert. Everywhere there are things trying to pull my desire in different directions. In such an environment, those who succeed are those who focus on the one thing they want. This isn't something that happens through enthusiasm or motivation; it happens through discipline. If we really want to become something in life, we won't lose our minds to an ice cream ad. Social media and things that give momentary pleasure constantly tempt our nature: "Instead of studying today, study the day before the exam; today sit and play games, watch a series." It doesn't work like that. A solid desire for the goal I want to reach and an environment to protect that desire are needed. Say I really want to get into the top hundred in the university entrance exam; two friends with this goal will make me fly. That's why the environment is very important. I won't hang around aimlessly; whatever my goal is, I'll be with people accordingly and lock onto it. Serious discipline and serious order are needed.

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We've talked about success the whole time. Well, every person wants to achieve success; what should they do when they can't? Let's talk a little about anxiety. Say a person wants to build a career and has anxiety about the future; life is a constant state of expectation and keeps closing in on you. How do you cope with this?

The most important thing in building this career is a good connection with people. We need to connect and protect that good connection so we can move forward; that way it's good for the whole society.

Yes, that's right. When I'm preparing for an exam I go back and forth to a prep course; there are many people around me there. If I'm on bad terms with them, I'll probably start not going, running away. But if everyone draws me there, if they ask "Where is he, why didn't he come?", this will inevitably pull me there. When the shared aim is passing that exam, this will have an incredible effect.

Yes, the bond is important. Let's also imagine two people; both will soon take the same exam, say the civil service exam. One's family says "We're behind you no matter what," their friends say "Don't worry, if it goes badly there'll be a way"; they're inside a family and circle of friends that supports them, inside such a bond. The other is inside an environment of competition: "You have to do this, look, so-and-so's daughter did it like that, so-and-so's son did it like this." The one inside a good bond probably won't be that anxious going into the exam; the other will be quite anxious. From this we can understand: if I think I won't be able to get pleasure in the future, I become anxious, because a human is a desire to receive pleasure; they want pleasure every hour of the day. If a person understands that they can get pleasure only in the bond between people, they'll be free of anxiety. Because wherever they go, whatever they reach or fail to reach in the future, if they don't have a circle they get along well with, they won't be happy. A person needs to think about what they're anxious about. If they have friends they get along well with, as we gather here regularly and connect, they'll stand firm against life even if their life goes very badly. That's how my life is. At least here we regularly connect with the Circle Method, by talking, and this strengthens a person against life.

Because all of this depends on social relationships. All our anxiety essentially comes from disconnection: "What will happen to me, will something happen to me, a bill I won't be able to pay tomorrow, an exam..." I'm always self-focused, because in this society I have to think of myself. Why? Because no one thinks of me; there's only me. If I don't think of myself, how will I survive? This is a very basic, instinctive thing. But it's also the cause of all the trouble, the stress, the depression. That's why the environment is the most important thing. If we were in an environment where everyone thought of and looked after one another, say a small tribe in 3000 BC, not even one percent of today's depression would exist in that society. Even today, in more traditional communities people are more connected to each other; think of a very poor family with ten children, you'd say "how do they not get depressed," but in some communities people are very happy. The truth is that in a person who becomes isolated, depression, anxiety and insecurity gradually increase; and at the end of all this, either violence directed at oneself or at others emerges, or the person puts themselves to sleep with sedatives, with antidepressants. That's why what we need is the bond in those communities; that national spirit, that community spirit we've lost.

Yes, being in a good environment where everyone thinks of everyone. In the past families were more connected to each other. As time passed, the egoistic desire to receive grew and we lost that bond. We need to rebuild that bond, consciously. The difference between those who build it and those who don't shows like this: every person in life is like a tightrope walker on a rope with a pole in their hands for balance, and they have to cross that rope from end to end. As the folk song says, "I'm on a long, narrow road." People who have bonds have a net below them; those who don't, don't. In life every person stumbles; every person fails in some way. Even the most successful person feels like a failure; in fact those who think they're the most successful, or who strive in that direction, fall into the feeling of failure even more. The bigger the expectation, the bigger the disappointment. All my life I've tried many things to get out of my depression, my distress; the easiest solution turned out to be mixing with people. It can be someone on the bus or your closest friend; but there always needs to be a person. A person really takes away another person's pain, draws out their poison.

This approach is good for people, because humans are social and emotional beings; they need the touch of other people. The point here goes beyond giving your neighbor a glass of water or helping them carry their things; a person needs something emotional born of the bond felt between them. When the bond between people isn't built well, a person becomes anxious. We're in such a period now that the human desire to receive has become so coarse, so unruly, that it's hard to practice this out there. For this an environment is needed, an environment where people come together and are educated according to the same laws of nature; most simply, the way we learn and practice the Circle Method here.

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Yes, we've come back around to education. Education is the beginning and the end of everything. Well, what has humanity always done when it educated? It acquired knowledge; it constantly multiplied knowledge. Now it feels it has reached the end of knowledge too: it can't measure in quantum mechanics, it can't unify general relativity and quantum mechanics. So what needs to be done? Did we learn this education in the wrong direction? Because when people can't reach happiness, they either fall into depression, become addicted to substances, or, may it happen to no one, are driven to suicide. And these aren't people who don't know; they can also be people who've achieved success in life, whom everyone looks at with envy. What's the problem here? Are we taking education in the wrong direction, or is there something we've applied wrongly until now? How will people find happiness without falling into depression and addiction?

Happiness is only in the bond between people. Someone thinks of me so much that I'm moved because they think of me; material things no longer matter. Only my friendship, my brotherhood with the person in front of me matters. Happiness is only in a good bond between people.

Yes, life seems to show a person that they need to focus there. Because even those who live the most expensive lives, who've found every possible opportunity, seem to be standing in front of a secret box they can't get into. The meaning of your life lies there, but the key isn't with you and you can never open it. Even if you set off a hydrogen bomb it won't open; atomic bombs were dropped in the world and peace didn't come to the world; on the contrary, they brought more destruction and fear. While humanity finds everything it can produce and discover, it somehow can't find the thing called happiness. Maybe the key is with someone else. Maybe it needs to think about this.

Yes, it should think about this. A person needs first to know themselves, then to change. Because a person constantly wants to fill themselves; that's also the reason for drugs. They want more satisfaction from life. Maybe they can't get enough satisfaction from other things; maybe by nature their satisfaction resets and they want more; or maybe they lose their belief that they can get satisfaction, conclude they'll never get satisfaction from anything again, and take their own life. But if they know themselves, understand that their nature is based on getting satisfaction and change themselves toward getting satisfaction from the right thing, there won't be such problems. The person won't be alone, and they'll find solutions to their problems. Because, as we said, the right satisfaction is in the bond between people.

We need to learn the right satisfaction; otherwise pleasure and desire cancel each other out. I desired something, fulfilled that desire, filled it; how many seconds does that pleasure last? The moment you satisfy the pleasure, pleasure and desire cancel each other out. That's why human nature is like a dog constantly chasing its tail, a mouse running in a vicious circle in a cage. Lasting pleasure needs human relationships; but this can't be done with just anyone; it's something to be practiced in a right environment, as the result of a shared education. Real and lasting pleasure is felt in the feeling of a right bond between people, in a right relationship.

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A friend in the chat wrote "What are you talking about?" Right now five young people are sitting and talking about life: life's problems, the things that affect us, what we'll do. Where have you seen such an environment? Who listens to whom? There's no such thing in society; we don't even have the habit of listening to someone. If we don't want to suffer more, this is what we need to learn. Otherwise life will teach it by force, because we really do have a wild nature. In a natural disaster, how does a country come together? The southeast was destroyed; what happened? People joined hands and together pulled people out from under the rubble. To understand certain things, does something like this have to happen to us? That's why we as young people need to wise up a bit, become conscious, and talk about these things before something happens to us; not after everything is over. We can't expect anything from adults either; the state of the country, the economy, is obvious. No one has hope anymore of expecting this from adults. Young people, our only hope really is us. And this isn't something to be belittled. If five or six of us here went out into nature, one cutting wood, another cutting stone, we'd build a town in ten days. A person shouldn't see themselves as too small. That's why we need to learn to listen and to talk among ourselves, before something happens to us, about how we'll solve these things and what the root of the problems is. Genç Pusula exists for this.

Yes, only with a good bond between people. If I find happiness in that good bond and everyone finds happiness in it, everyone can overcome everything; they can free themselves from material pleasures and value the person in front of them. This happens with time; people will feel there's a need for it. Why? Because they've received everything they can receive. Even the poorest person has access to the internet; they can see anything they want, watch the best film, listen to the most famous artist. We hear jokes like "Future generations will need only a phone, pizza and oxygen." Time will show this; but before its time, we can remind each other of it by talking.

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Looking back, which memories stay with us? The memories we lived through with someone always last; the memories of times we were alone don't stay in our minds. Even for memories to be remembered, for life to be felt, for pleasure to be had and for happiness to be possible, a person depends on other people. We can even call this a law of nature. We constantly talk about laws of nature; one of them is that everything is connected and interdependent. Whoever breaks this law can't be happy; even if they don't know it, when they break it they pay the price. Like gravity: even if a baby doesn't know the law of gravity, if it jumps off a roof gravity works on it too. In the same way, when everything is connected and interdependent, I can't cut myself off from other people. But I can build a right bond only in a suitable environment, with people who've been educated in the laws of nature. That's why a society focused on education, environment and the laws of nature needs to be built. You can see a small example of that society right now in front of you.

My life being good depends on other people's lives being good too. In England some billionaires signed something saying "Tax us more." Because they know this: if the poor are unhappy, the street is unsafe. That's it. Let the poor be at least a little happy so the streets are safer and my life is good too. At least they understand this: my life depends on other people's lives being good too. We too should understand this and behave accordingly in our lives; for that a serious education is needed.

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Yes, what's understood in education is this: a person seems to be left on their own, and there's no other way but to do this together. Since no education has brought people happiness, we have to look for a different education. Coming together this evening was really nice; we touched on very good topics and, most importantly, we were together, in unity. Whether the problems get solved or not doesn't matter at all; what matters is this unity, this sense of wholeness. I'm glad you were here. See you next week, good evening.

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