Name: 【TEDx】Faithfully Religionless: Timber Hawkeye at TEDxHonolulu 2012
Uploaded: 2014-06-14T17:09:31.000Z
Duration: 9 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I traveled for several months across the country

and I stayed with different host families along the way.

What I found to be consistently true with everyone I met

is that all of our suffering is self-inflicted.

The folks who complained the most about their health, for example,

were the ones who served bacon-wrapped meatloaf for dinner, with pie and ice cream for dessert.

And the families who complained the most about not having enough money, about "struggling to get by,"

with two-car garages, and a private pool in the back yard.

I looked around and thought,  "These people are so poor, all they have is money."

"They're still missing the one thing that actually makes us rich."

yet as a culture, we tend to cover our own eyes, and then cry that it is dark.

After a few months of observing this, the pain in my heart became way too much to bear.

I wanted to surround myself with people who were at least consciously aware of our habitual tendency to self-destrcut.

So I moved into a Zen monastery, completely off the grid, with no cellular or internet connection.

but after a year at two different temples,

I realized that I am of no benefit to the world if I keep myself tucked away at a monastery somewhere,

and there WAS something else besides despair in everyone I met:

There was a hunger for inner peace, for tranquility,

But we can't all take a year off to live in the mountains,

Our attention span has gotten extremely short, hasn't it?

we consider anything over.. what is it? 160 characters?

So even when people are interested in inspiration,

and there is no shortage of motivational books out there,

those books are simply too thick and intimidating for most of us.

I envisioned a very simple guide to being happy,

Be grateful. Because gratitude has a way of turning what we have into "enough".

to come up with the important elements that will dictate the success of our future cities...

So if we're going to design a successful city,

we need to make sure the people in it are happy.

We have been so terribly misguided by the notion

that happiness is something we have to pursue.

And it's in that pursuit of happiness that we have actually lost our way.

So instead of chasing happiness like a hamster on a wheel,

Just a few minutes each day of taking inventory of everything in your life worth appreciating,

is the first step we can take to guiding the next generation

away from this growing sense of entitlement,

and toward a deeper appreciation for life itself.

We casually say things like, "Take a deep breath."

The breath is not something we just "take".

It is a miracle that is offered to us over and over again,

yet much like our health, we often take it for granted right up until the moment we no longer have it.

You see,  "SOMETHING" is making your heart beat right now,

your lungs function, the grass grow, and the planets spin.

we put a lot of trust in it to wake us up tomorrow morning.

We don't KNOW that it will, we blindly trust it.

So whether you've ever admitted it before or not,

And it doesn't matter whether you call it "God",  "The Universe", "Mother Nature" or "Father Time",

because the name you give it, isn't as important as the appreciation you have for it.

Your beliefs don't make you a better person,  your behavior does.

So let's promote gratitude in the same way that  "going green" has become so popular.

By doing that, we would be bridging the gap between rich and poor communities,

because everybody's life would be enriched.

By changing the perspective from which we view the world,

if we look at it through the lens of love and gratitude,

And we will transform the way we do things.

So when I sat down to think of ways to improve our current living situation to a new "version"... a new "City 2.0,"

I found it crucial not to think small or limit this project to one community,

Because if we're going to create a city  with gratitude at its core,

we want to create a platform that can be replicated,

so that our city is not an anomaly,  but the new standard for all future communities.

So who is this "We" that I keep talking about?

who are going to get together and take on the responsibility of making these really important changes?

It is us. It is you and I. We are that organization.

We can tap directly into people's hunger for inspiration

through our daily interactions with our friends,