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| If we whittle life down to one concept, one commodity, it's energy so imagine your happiness is determined by the amount of fuel, i.e. energy, you have in your tank. Any level above half makes it easier to be happy. Any level below half makes it more difficult. Surprisingly, a lot of people live closer to 50% than they realize. At first glance, most people seem reasonably happy going about their day to day lives, but as soon as one little unexpected thing happens we find out just how happy a person really is. If they are running too close to 50%, it doesn't take much for them to drop below half and go from happy to unhappy in a matter of seconds. This is when we see a very different side of them. Sound familiar? One second a person seems nice. The next, you are the enemy and they're declaring war on you. It wasn't until I became a happy person that I realized just how many people in my life weren't even though from the outside they appeared to be. The easier someone is to anger the closer they live to half a tank, or far below it. Anything below half is a degree of unhappiness growing more unhappy the lower this level falls, 49% being almost happy and 1% feeling dead inside. Remembering that energy exists in a miriad of forms including natural resources, material possessions and social interactions, it's very important to be able to identify which forms are natural and sustainable and which are a disguised version of one-sided taking. Some people can live completely miserable on the inside while completely comfortable on the outside just as long as they have enough external resources to take from. This is because it takes more than physical energy to make a person happy. Some people choose being in control over being happy. With a little success at over-controlling, they can convince themselves and others that they're happy, but as soon as something alters their world in the slightest bit, the reality of the situation takes over and the truth is easily seen. This is when they become a very difficult entity to deal with. Because we have built an entire world contrary to the formula of life, very unhappy people can easily live, even become "successful", in this mind-made world because a person needs to give very little energy in to function in it if they're able to take all that they need and want. They can simply consume resources without giving any back in return. This could never be possible in the natural world because by Mother Nature's design if an organism doesn't have enough energy to participate in the formula for life, it will die. Even a scavenger has to travel great distances, which uses energy, to find food. Life requires action. Action requires energy. A blunter way to put it is, our artificial world is breeding a race of useless, unhappy human beings. Sorry, that sounded harsh, but look around. No worries, the happy healthy people will lead the way because they are stronger and those who aren't will eventually have to make themselves useful and start giving not just taking. The beauty of natural law is when you give your real, actual energy properly you get energy back. This is how one becomes stronger. Far too much of our culture particularly our economic system is focused on taking, or tricking, energy from one another within the confines of this artificial world. Money is not energy. It's a system of unnatural rules that if played by, honestly or dishonestly, give a person access to actual resources whether or not they invested any energy into it themselves to acquire it. For those living in a more natural way, the fuller a person's tank is the more they can absorb unexpected events. Disappointments and misunderstandings are not the end of the world if a person lives far above half a tank. At 75%, when something happens that doesn't go their way and takes a little of their energy, it barely affects them. When you're driving your car with a full tank of gas and get lost, it's no big deal because you've got plenty of fuel to find your way or to make it back to where you started, but if you're running on fumes, things can go from bad to worse very quickly. The fuller your tank the more of a buffer you have from anything changing your mood and happiness. The point is, the directions on a road map or the instructions in a book, including this one, cannot help a person if they don't have any gas in their car or fuel in their tank. If their fears, insecurities, lack of hope or loss of motivation depletes them because they haven't learned how to keep their tank full, they either need to learn how to replenish themselves through real work or learn how to take energy from others. A person's bank account may seem like a perfect analogy for the metaphor of a fuel tank, but it is far from it because we are talking about real energy, not an artificial representation of it. All money really is, in terms of energy, is the storage of someone else's work, which is often not the person's whose bank account it is in. Real energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only converted from one form to another. This is the law of the conservation of energy first introduced to the world by Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) who during her lifetime made great contributions in the field of physics, philosophy and mathematics. How we fill our tanks and keep them full will be covered in later chapters, but, for now, it's important to apply this tool when interacting with people on a daily basis, including ourselves, to know what level of energy we are operating from. If a person finds themselves losing their temper easily or experiencing a lot of fear in their everyday life, it is most likely because despite any material resources they might have they are living with a fuel tank that is far from full. If we are born happy, how does our fuel tank become so low by the time we are adults, or even before then? Before birth, we are inside our mother surrounded by her life giving source. When we are born, we are immediately separated from the source of life and thrust into an artificial world. The artificial world is separate from us. Everything in it is dead. Nothing in the mind-made world is alive, walls, floors, concrete, cars, buildings. It's all dead. The Earth is alive, the trees, the grass, the birds, the animals, even us, everything. It is all part of one living ecosystem. We belong to this ecosystem. The only thing alive in the mind-made world is us, but we have been convinced that we are separate from one another. We are individuals. We're taught that our identity is more important than something greater than ourselves that we are already apart of. We grow up without the comfort and security of our tribe. We're taught to listen to our mind over our heart. Our ego which is defined by what we think of ourselves becomes the most important thing to us. The world is a scary place for one individual to face alone everyday. Fear depletes a person's fuel tank very quickly. The only way to empower yourself is to reconnect with the formula for life and with one another.
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