The very affable Robin Singh had everything he wanted and more—well-settled in the US, financial freedom, married to the love of his life—except he was not happy. It was in his pursuit of happiness that he stumbled across purpose. It eventually took giving up on happiness and pursuing purpose before he realised that he had finally found what he had been looking for.
Happiness Happens is ultimately an exploration of what really makes us happy. It is Robin’s journey told simply, with the hope that it will reach people who are dissatisfied with how they have been living but haven’t yet been able to answer how else to live.
In a very candid e-mail interview Robin talks at length about his book which is making waves titled – Happiness Happens – Happiness for Those Who Have Everything Else. And his life after exiting his tech company and starting Peepal Farm—an animal rescue centre.
Excerpts :
Q : Happiness Happens is a rather intriguing heading for a book .Any reasons?
A: The reason I chose to open the book with Happiness is that I realized, in the course of my own life, that much of the suffering we experience, and cause are both stemming from our misinformed pursuit of Happiness.
Now the word Happiness and Happens have the same root — Hap — which means chance. Although this is something I uncovered later, my own life experience taught me that happiness can’t be directly pursued, but our lives can certainly be led in a way that happiness happens.
Q For someone who had everything one could ask for, what was your reason to be unhappy?
A: That was the million dollar question that I didn’t have an answer for, which was only compounding my unhappiness. My attempt to answer this question started with a simple realisation that although we learn everything we do, from driving a car to reading, writing … we never really learn how to deal with loss, with gain, or how to be happy! So the simple answer why I was unhappy was that I had not learnt to happy. I couldn’t even define happiness.
Like many others, I had let the popular societal values and corporations take advantage of this meaning void and put me on this hedonic treadmill of pursuing things which doesn’t satiate, but the chase keeps us distracted enough to not realize that our consumption is not filling the void.
The system broke for me, when I had everything I wanted and was like “now what”. I realised that there is no end to this chase. No matter what we achieve, we will adapt to it in some time, and we have to constantly keep moving the goal post. We have to want to want…to stay distarcted from the infinite meaning void that we have. I was unhappy as I wasn’t willing to participate in scamming myself by getting consumed in a meaningless pursuit.
Q In the fast paced competitive world today, do you think this attribute is a worrying trend or do you think it depends on individual?
A : All of us have evolved to have brains which have to constantly be busied in solving a problem. After sorting our survival, we continue on the societal template of marriage, kids and then preparing them to be copies of ourselves but during or after there comes a point where we question it all. It could be because we have run out of things to do, or an event that throws us off the treadmill. It could be a personal life event or something like COVID.
That said, I do think that a lot of us — due to nature and nurture — find it easier to be consumed by meaningless pursuits and minutia, and aren’t bothered by the existential suffering as much. It’s the other few who are cursed to go through this existential suffering but are also the forutnate ones, who — if can stick with the suffering long enough — can find a way to live which is better for them, and good for the world.
Q You said in your pursuit of happiness you stumbled upon a purpose. Has the purpose been achieved ?
A: It will never be achieved. I repurposed by life by changing its orientation. I was earlier wanting to take more more more for myself, and I want give more more more for others. It’s still an infinite chase, but one is like overeating and is bad for my health, and the other is feeding others which is good for their health.
My specific purpose — reducing suffering — is ongoing. There are mile markers, like setting a rescue, starting a hospital, setting up an animation studio to do awareness, but the work will keep going. I see this as a relay race where I carry the baton to s certain point, and after that someone else will carry it futher. The suffering is constant, and endless, so should be our effort to reduce it.
Q From a high flying tech company to starting an animal rescue centre . Tell us about this journey .
A: I can answer this, but this will be half the book 🙂 When I came back to India, it wasn’t to help animals or anyone for that matter. I came seeking answer to a question — how to be happy. At the end of an 18 month exploration when I didn’t have my answer, a chance encounter put me on this path of purpose.
I took the path because I had given up on the idea of being happy, and I didn’t really know what else to do. I say that as after exiting my tech company, I had a realisation that everything we consume to live is either farmed, or mined, and causes someone to suffer somewhere. I called it our suffering footprint. Being cognizant of my suffering footprint had put me in jam…that how can I call myself a good person when I know that I am causing suffering just by the virtue of living!
So the path of purpose gave me an out…if I have to cause suffering to live, then I must live mindfully to cause minimum suffering, and live to reduce maximum suffering.
Q Has this venture given you the happiness you were looking for? Doing what one loves and staying happy?
A: The short, yet misleading answer is yes. I started this venture not looking for happiness, but after giving up on it. It was only after a few years of doing this I realized that the satiation I now felt — something I had never felt before, and this something I could describe before — is what I had sought all along. It was like someone who has always tried to quench their thirst with coke, not knowing that water exists. Now ideally after my first sip of water, I should have had my aha moment…but I didn’t, as there’s a lifestyle withdrawal and it took a few years of adjustment period before I could recognize water for what it was.
Having a goal and being able to works towards it is what makes you successful. It also takes your existential suffering away, which is a contributor in happiness but not itself a guarantee of happiness.
Q The animal rescue centre name is striking too, Peepal Farm. Tells about the number of animals ( which ones) you have rescued, the year you started and response from the public towards this generous cause.
A: Thank you 🙂 One reason why we called it Peepal Farm that just like the Peepal tree that crops up old buildings, and its root form these cracks which provide a space for new growth, we wanted to fracture the obsolete thought process of looking at animals as objects and make space for fresh thought. Our rescue helps over a 1000 animals which get injured in streets. It’s mostly dogs, cows and a few cats and mules. The only animals you see on the streets are the ones people don’t end up eating, which is why you don’t see goats, hens and buffaloes.
Our awareness initiative helps people close the gap between their actions and their own belief that we shouldn’t do to others what we don’t want to happen to us. We reach tens of millions people a month. While there is no accurate measure of how much change how many individuals are bringing, we know from comments that close to 2000 people a year change their consumption patterns, and that’s a big win as a lot more animals die on our dinner tables than roads.
Many more people get the seed of awareness planted in their minds. If the mind of fertile, and when the conditions are right… it will sprout. For some it will grow to be a big Peepal tree spreading seeds of its own.
Q Your mantra to people who lead a stressful life and are in search of happiness. What would you tell them?
A : If we equate our live to taking a long flight, then chasing happiness can be equated to taking the flight for in flight meals, entertainment and the comforter. While we like having all of that during the flight, no one will get on a flight for this. We get on the flight to get somewhere.
In life too, we need to have an overarching goal which answers “why am I living”. In the pursuit of that goal the suffering of stress also goes down as like Viktor Frankl said, suffering isn’t suffering once it finds meaning. Having a purpose removes our existential suffering, and helps lower our emotional suffering. So when we aren’t suffering physically, emotionally and existentially…we are happy, as happiness is absence of suffering.
