When my children were small, I used to watch them for long stretches without doing anything else.
My son Matea, my daughter Mia. There's nothing unusual in a father watching his children, of course. But I noticed something in those hours that has shaped how I think about my work ever since.
When they were hungry, they cried. When something hurt, they cried. When they were tired or uncomfortable, they let the whole house know about it. And then, as soon as the hunger was fed or the hurt was soothed, something remarkable happened. They went straight back. Back to curiosity. Back to delight. Back to that wide-eyed, total absorption in whatever was in front of them, a spoon, a shadow, their own feet.
No grudges. No story about the discomfort. No lingering sense that the world was against them. Just a return, almost immediately, to a kind of ease that seemed to be their natural setting.
Are we born happy?
In a sense, yes. Watch a young child and you'll see that once discomfort passes, they return quickly to curiosity, delight and ease. That return suggests well-being isn't something we have to earn or build. It's where we start. What changes over a lifetime is how much gets layered on top of it.
I want to be precise here, because "born happy" can sound like a slogan. Children feel the full range of emotions, and they feel them strongly. What stands out isn't that they never suffer. It's how naturally they come back.
What is our natural state?
In my teaching, I often speak of our default state, the way we were when we came into this world. Long before we learned so many things by watching the people around us. Long before we learned what was appropriate and what wasn't, what earned approval and what earned punishment.
That default state isn't a mood. It's more like a baseline. Moods come and go on top of it, the way weather passes over a landscape that stays where it is. Open, present, interested in life. Not worrying about tomorrow or replaying yesterday, because neither of those habits has been learned yet.
Many traditions have pointed in this direction for a very long time. Look within, they say. What you're searching for is already there. I've come to believe that part of what they mean is exactly this: the ease you had at the beginning hasn't gone anywhere. It's simply been buried under everything that came after.
Why do so many of us lose touch with it?
Because we learn, and much of what we learn is heavy.
A child who is shamed learns that part of them is unacceptable. A child who is frightened learns that the world isn't safe. A child who has to earn love learns that ease is something you can't afford. Each lesson lays down a layer. And on top of those layers, identities form: the careful one, the achiever, the one who never makes a fuss. I call them survival identities.
Here's what happens next. Where the child used to return to ease the moment the discomfort passed, the adult doesn't return. The discomfort passes, but the story about it stays. I'm not safe. I'm not enough. Something bad is about to happen. The adult carries those stories everywhere, long after the original moment, and never quite comes home to the baseline.
Not because the baseline is gone. Because it's covered.
You can see this in the way many adults talk about their own childhoods. They'll describe a version of themselves who sang without being asked, who made friends in a minute, who was fascinated by everything. And then, almost always, a moment when that changed. A move. A loss. A harsh word at the wrong time. They don't usually describe losing their happiness. They describe learning to be careful, and the carefulness slowly taking up all the room.
If it's covered, can it be uncovered?
Yes, and that's the heart of what I do.
Over twenty years of this work, one thing has become clearer to me every year. Well-being doesn't need to be constructed. It needs to be uncovered. When the old charge is taken off the painful conclusions, when the survival identities are no longer needed, the natural state starts to return by itself. People don't learn to be at ease. They remember.
I've seen this happen in ways that still move me. One of the stories I think of most often is a teenager in severe depression and withdrawal who came through to full recovery in a single session. That's what was reported, and I share it as it was reported, not as a promise for anyone else. If you or someone close to you is struggling with depression, please keep working with your professional. I share the story because it shows something about how close the natural state can be, even when it seems furthest away.
You are not broken. You are buried.
How can I notice my own natural state?
This practice is about watching, and it takes place over a few days, whenever the chance comes up.
If there's a young child in your life, spend some time simply observing them. If not, a pet will do, or even your own experience. What you're watching for is the return. The moment after an upset, when the tears stop or the frustration passes, and something softer comes back.
Then, once you've seen it in someone else, start watching for it in yourself. After a stressful call, after a small annoyance, after a worry, notice whether you come back to ease, and how long it takes. Most adults find there's a delay. The upset passes, but a story about it keeps running. Sometimes it runs for minutes. Sometimes for days.
Don't fight the story. Just notice the gap between the moment the discomfort ended and the moment you let yourself return. That gap is made of learned things. And the fact that you can see it is the beginning of closing it. It's also a very practical way into being present.
What does it feel like to come home to it?
Familiar, more than new.
People who find their way back to their natural state rarely describe it as something they've never felt before. They describe it as something they'd forgotten. A lightness they had as a child. An ease in their own body. A kind of quiet delight in ordinary things. The words they use are often homecoming words, which is why I wrote about how to feel at home in yourself.
With each passing year of doing this work, I find myself living more and more from that place myself. Freer, more loving, more at peace. I want that for everyone who reads this, but only if they want it for themselves.
Who were you before you learned to survive?
That's the question underneath all of this. The child who returned to delight the moment the tears stopped didn't disappear. They learned to hide behind an identity that felt safer.
If you're curious which identity that was, I made a short quiz called Who Did You Become to Survive? It takes about ninety seconds, twenty-one questions, and it may show you the layer that's been sitting on top of your natural state for a very long time.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.