What is a Good Life? #161
The Potential For Compassion with Rasmus Hougaard
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project that isn’t about fixing you - it’s about noticing and inhabiting life more fully.
This week, I am reflecting on a conversation with Rasmus Hougaard, chairman and founder of Potential Project and author. A conversation that moves from childhood questions about happiness, to monasteries in Nepal, to finding purpose through tragedy. This conversation sits with both the challenge of being human and the incredible capacity we have for loving kindness.
If this project resonates with you, thank you for being here — and if you’d like to support it, consider a paid subscription, sharing, or subscribing.
Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
On Sunday afternoon, my toddler handed me an inflated balloon and asked me to untie it.
I’d never tried to untie a balloon before, so instinctively I told her you don’t untie balloons and blow them back up.
I heard myself say that and something felt off.
So I started to pinch and pull at the knot, a bit frustrating at first, and then to my genuine wonder it came apart. By the third one I had a technique down and it was rather easy. I was smiling at my certainty five minutes earlier.
I asked her to take one to her mum and ask her the same question. I just wanted to witness my wife’s response, and it was the exact same as my initial response.
What are you telling yourself about your life right now that can’t be untied?
This made me think of something Rasmus points to: research consistently shows that after meeting basic needs, accumulating more wealth and possessions doesn’t reliably increase our happiness - and often makes us less satisfied. Yet what do we primarily focus our energy on?
A recurring motif in my life is speaking to some very wealthy people who talk wistfully of simpler times - when they had less money but more presence.
When I look at the speed and distracted hunger of our culture, I see a considerable lack of presence.
It is something I am always tinkering with in my life if I feel this presence drift.
Over the last month I’ve made one day over the weekend a day without any screens. It’s amazing how spaciousness emerges without the possibility of checking something regularly. I usually don’t carry a phone, but even the possibility of some world waiting on my laptop creates a low-level anxiety. I only really notice its existence with the contrast of its absence.
Without that in my day, time moves more slowly.
We can never dedicate enough time to our online world. It’s like that Eric Hoffer quote: “You can never get enough of what you don’t need.” It unconsciously fills all the space around and during activities, even sacred time on the toilet seat.
We attempt to give our children, our partners, everyone ‘everything’ - yet often without giving our presence and attention first. Akin to buying a plant a fancy pot when you haven’t watered it enough.
When we’re more present, different kinds of connection become possible.
This story from Rasmus tells me something of what we are missing:
“I was giving a meditation retreat in Southern France. And suddenly this guy comes walking in these like big rubber boots, he’s a monk, he looked scruffy and he comes straight to me and he looks me in the eye and he takes my hand and I tell you I’ve never felt a hand like that.
And the experience of his look in my eyes, his presence, his hand, was so unbelievably overwhelming that I was in tears. And I had never heard of the guy, never seen the guy before.
And I’m sharing it because Dalai Lama and others, we all have all kinds of projections on these people that stirs up all kinds of stuff in ourselves.
But here was Bodhisattva Charles, who is a completely unknown old monk, who walks up to me, takes my hand, looks into my eyes and asks how I’m doing. And it completely opened my heart.”
If I could wish one thing for us to experience, it would be a moment of unconditional love. I suspect it would radically alter the perpetual chasing that runs our lives. Not in some perfect sense of constantly giving and receiving it. But moments where you were present enough to notice the experience of it. It would pierce through so many of the stories we tell about what is important.
For me it is not uncommon to experience it when speaking to or meeting with someone for the first time. I recall a Zoom call last year with a middle-aged man from the States who I had never spoken to before, it was simply there. Something in our eyes gave it away.
It can even be in the moment of eye contact with a stranger we pass on the street.
I believe we have conditioned ourselves out of experiencing it. We have created a concept of it with clearly defined rules and boundaries rather than something we feel.
And we have told ourselves that to believe love has something to offer to meet a cynical and untrusting world is a naive thing.
I wonder if it’s as naive as we think it is. I wonder if it’s yet another thing we instinctively say we cannot do.
2. This Week’s Questions
What do you frequently say can’t be done that you haven’t actually tested?
Can you describe a moment of unconditional love that you experienced?
Work With Me
Good Life Coaching — a space of presence for individuals navigating questions of direction, meaning, and what needs attention now.
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - The Potential For Compassion with Rasmus Hougaard - What is a Good Life? #161
Listen to the full conversation with Rasmus Hougaard below.
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own good life through one-on-one coaching contact me via email.