Holding the print copy of the issue, a publication that took months of planning, designing, and a fair share of headaches, I should have felt pride, or at least a tinge of satisfaction. Yet there was none of this—passion retired, desire to show it off nascent, nostalgia sidelined.

If emotionalism and impassioned joy is on one side of the spectrum, then this must be the opposite. Dozens of hours of intensely productive and even invigorating work channeled into the glossy print pages I was holding, yet here I was, peering out into the distance in search of the next challenge to pull out my hair over.

Luckily, as I’m reminded by the three-and-a-half-hour stop and go slog to Seoul that gives me a fine window to put down my thoughts, I get another shot at this particular challenge. A handful of Fulbrighters are spending our Saturday afternoons planning the second issue of the year.

“Happiness is a how, not a what,” Hesse writes in Siddhartha. The book echoes current experience: the book itself became famous as a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies, particularly elucidating those with Western-trained minds. Though intense days-long meditation and journeys of self-discovery were not my methods, similar questions to Hesse’s Gautama have naturally arisen.

I don’t believe I’m jaded just yet. As a close friend put it this past weekend, “Now we are at an age where can be happy without a reason.” A “해맑아” or a bubbly and innocent sort of happiness. Is it true? That down the road, the pavement ends, and we have to be happy for a reason?

It can be said that the “how” happy people—the ones caught smiling absentmindedly, seeing the glass as perpetually half full or better—are people who stick out; when you’re in the same room as her, you know it. And yet, it seems, there are fewer in the room who are how happy and more and more chasing a “what” sort of happiness. Whether its page views or revenues, personal bests or promotions, contemporary culture has conflated quantitative statistics with non-quantifiable happiness. But as Socrates once put it, popular beliefs are like the monsters under the bed—only useful for frightening children with. Yet here we are, like those children, afraid of these statistics’ grip on our personal satisfaction all the same.

It’s a bit ironic to know that the work I’ll be starting in the fall is purely measured in statistical outcomes, with success directly tied to them. Words like lift, churn, regress, and correlate will re-enter my 9am-7pm lexicon, and I’ll be genuinely grinning the first time I get to report a quantified 5% lift in sales for the first time. But this isn’t—or shouldn’t be—where happiness comes from. That’s a what, not a how kind of fulfillment.

As spring finally enters the scene, bringing with it the double-edged sword of sunshine and pollen, a sort of antsy-ness and impatience creeps in. Because life is growth; you grow or you fade into the background. And growing now has slowed down, as if the diminishing marginal returns curve is framing the calendar.

Phil Knight became successful founder of the company with the most famous slogan for achievers—Just do it. Yet a lesson he learned from a mentor taught just the opposite. As Knight struggled over whether his newly appointed managers were learning fast enough, his Japanese CEO friend told him:

“See those bamboo trees up there? Next year…when you come…they will be one foot higher.”

Looking for growth is like watching grass grow or clouds passing overhead; you may not notice, but change is advancing nonetheless. Knowing that should be enough for consistent happiness.