🌪️ Is Unawareness the Secret to Happiness?

What a Chinese friend, a Danish job, and a spiritual breakdown in India taught me about asking better questions.

Are We Too Afraid to Ask?

I once had a friend from China named Emma. We met in Copenhagen while working for a Chinese company selling Scandinavian design to Hong Kong.

Sounds dreamy, right?
It wasn’t.

Emma and I were both foreigners trying to navigate the Danish fashion world. We worked long hours, were paid less than our Danish colleagues, and somehow the unfair expectations came from our Hong Kong-based boss — not even from Denmark itself.

Emma’s time in Denmark wasn’t easy. But she had come to explore. To learn. To live outside the world she grew up in.

A few years later, she told me she was moving back. Her family had arranged a marriage for her — with a man she had never met.

Benjamin (my boyfriend at the time) and I were stunned.
“Why would you go back to that?” we asked.
“To an arranged marriage? To a place where you can’t express yourself freely?”

Her response has echoed in me ever since.

“There are fewer choices in China,” she said. “And with fewer choices, come fewer worries. You follow the system. You don’t question it. And that makes life easier.”

When Benjamin asked, “But isn’t that brainwashing?”
She smiled and said,

“I know I’m brainwashed. But is it brainwashing if I know it? And is it even that bad?”

She didn’t want to know about war, corruption, or politics.

“The less you know, the happier you are,” she said.

That sentence haunted me.

The Less You Know?

We’ve all heard some version of it.

The less you have, the happier you are.
The less you know, the easier it is to live.

But is that really true?

I didn’t go to India because I was unhappy.
I had a sweet life — a loving partner, two dogs, a safe home. I wasn’t escaping. I was following curiosity. I wanted to go deeper into yoga. And into myself.

But three weeks in, I found myself on the floor, crying.

Not because I was miserable —
But because I was so happy — so present, so cracked open — that I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to “normal” and not feeling this alive again.

Maybe it was Shailesh’s dynamic meditations. Maybe it was all the stillness. The talks. The silence. The mirror held up to my life.

Whatever it was — it opened something.

Once You Start Asking...

Once you open the tap of questions, they don’t stop. Ever.

And that’s okay.

Because the only way forward…
is inward.

We don’t need to have all the answers.
We don’t need to control everything.
But to truly be okay with not knowing, we first need to know ourselves.

And that starts by asking — and never stopping asking — the real questions.

When Asking Questions Makes You “Difficult”

Maybe that’s why I’ve always struggled in traditional workplaces.

I’ve been called negative — just for asking:

• Why are we doing this?

• What are we trying to achieve?

• Is this about real impact or just performance?

I’m not afraid of decisions. Or change.
I’m someone who jumps in, gets things moving, makes it happen.
But when decisions affect others — especially children — I believe we owe it to them to pause and reflect on why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Not Negative — Just Awake

I’ve often been labeled as “difficult” or “challenging.”
But maybe that’s because I haven’t found many leaders I genuinely trust enough to follow without questioning.

That’s not me being negative.
That’s me being conscious.

I’ve been dismissed for not having kids while working with kids.
Dismissed for being too young, too curious, too much.
I’ve even been told to “smile more” while asking someone to do the job they were hired to do.

I once asked a boss to help me with a colleague who was undermining my work. His answer?

“You just need to learn how to deal with him. Let him do his own thing. And stop asking so many questions.”

But I Won’t Stop Asking.

No. I haven’t stopped asking questions.
And I don’t plan to.

Maybe that’s why so many of us are creating our own paths.
Because when your greatest strengths — like initiative, reflection, curiosity — are seen as problems…
Working for yourself starts to feel like the safer, saner option.

So call me negative if you want.
But I’d rather be the person asking hard questions
than the one sleepwalking through someone else’s decisions.

Because the truth is:

We don’t need fewer questions. We need better ones.