The date is Someday, November – 1922.

Shortly after winning the prestigious Nobel prize, Albert Einstein – the 20th century’s prodigy, goes on a world tour that ended up with him in Tokyo.

The place is a quiet room in The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Einstein checks in his hotel room and immediately throws himself into his work. He used to spend hours scribbling notes on little pieces of papers that would later on change the way we see the universe and the world around us.

Upon leaving the hotel, he searched his pocket for small notes to tip the bellhop that carried his luggage, but that day, as the universe would have it, he was without luck.

Einstein being a kick-ass all around awesome human being, scribbled few lines on a piece of paper, signed it off and gave it to the bellhop.

He advised him to keep it, on the hope that one day, its value will be more than the tip he owed him.

And like most of his prophecies, this one came true 95 years later.

That piece of paper was sold in an auction in Jerusalem, Palestine on October 27th 2017 for $1.56 Million.

You would be wrong to guess that these short lines had anything to do with E = MC2 or Quantum Mechanics. On this paper, Einstein presented to the world his theory on happiness.

The notereads: “A quiet and modest life brings more joy than pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

And just like that, Einstein has thrown away everything I have achieved with my 30 year of restlessness on this earth.

30 year pursuing success while battling with unrest, doubt and insomnia.

Every milestone I achieved was mirrored by a mirage of endless sadness.

There are two kind of miseries in this life; the first isn’t to achieve your dreams. The second is to actually achieve them.

Maybe because they happen after it is too late.

Maybe because you realize that achieving these dreams didn’t make you as happy as you thought you would become.

Maybe because we simply chose wrong.

Einstein was right about this, as much as he was right about gravitational waves and special relativity. The secret to happiness is a quiet and a modest life. A time spent around your family and beloved ones. Being ordinary.

The more money you earn, the more women you sleep with, the more places you visit, the more you learn, the more you experience, the less happy you usually become. Maybe more successful. More seasoned. More informed.

But definitely not anymore happier.

It kind of feel like my whole life has been a dream and I just now began to wake up!

 

” There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, has wasted earth.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, O Russet Witch.