happiness..

Taking time out for yourself, to be alone with yourself, to know your weaknesses and your strengths and to make yourself a better person: that is satisfying.

Finding Beauty in Solitude

But when you look around, you see those streetlights accompanying you in your loneliness. You hear a dog barking in the dark, making you realize that he too is there, lonely.

Those stars twinkling in the dark black sky give your eyes a lovely treat. Looking at the sky, you see the moon glancing back at you, calm and composed, happily spreading its light to brighten up people's lives in the dark.

And the enhancing beauty of music gives your life back.

Living your life to the fullest is the path to a happy life.

Looking back

The reflections below look back on these earlier thoughts from my later work and studies.

The Courage to Be Still

I've learned that I am most myself in quiet moments, and it's in those moments that I've made my biggest decisions: the choice to pursue computer science when everyone around me doubted it, the decision to leave Nepal for graduate school in Washington, DC, and the realization that I wanted to build technology not just because I could, but because I wanted to help people who couldn't access it otherwise.

Finding happiness in the process

I used to think happiness was something I'd arrive at, after the degree, after the job, after the project shipped. But that version of happiness kept moving further away each time I reached for it.

What I found instead is that happiness lives inside the process: the late-night debugging sessions where something finally clicks, the moment when a design you spent weeks on suddenly feels right, the simple act of cooking a new meal and eating it alone with music playing.

Finding Your North Star

Everyone talks about finding your passion, but I think what matters more is finding your why. My why is the digital divide I grew up watching. It's the reason I build accessible systems. It's the reason I care so much about good design, because bad design excludes people.

When your work is tied to something real, to people, to problems you've lived, the days that feel hard become easier to weather. And the days that feel good become genuinely joyful, not just productive.

Happiness as a practice

I now think of happiness as a practice. Like yoga or writing, it is something you return to, fall away from and return to again.

Taking time for yourself, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and choosing to grow from them: that is the practice. On the days I keep it, however imperfectly, it looks a lot like the night I wrote about years ago, with the streetlights for company and music playing.