Dawa Sonam

My grandson died six months ago. A boy full of life, full of questions—until the questions turned inward and silent. It’s strange to think of his life folding in on itself in a place like this, where mountains reach so high they almost seem to hold the sky. Bhutan is known for its happiness, for the way we measure well-being over wealth. But what people don't talk about is how happiness can feel like a burden, especially when you can’t seem to find it.

He was only 18. Too young to have felt so lost, I think. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself because I don’t know how else to make sense of it. The internet came to our village a few years ago, and I watched the way it changed things. Families don’t gather in the same way. The old stories we used to share—about gods and spirits, about the way the world breathes—they get swallowed up by the bright, endless noise of screens.

It’s hard to explain to someone from outside. Everyone expects us to be happy here, as if happiness were a permanent condition, like the shape of the mountains or the flow of rivers. But happiness slips away when you're not looking. And when it does, there’s a silence that no one wants to fill. We don’t have the right words for it yet, not in our language, not in our culture.

I’m 75 now. I’ve lived long enough to know that there’s no such thing as a life without suffering. It weaves through everything, as invisible as the wind but just as present. I see it in the eyes of the young ones who are so afraid to admit they’re unhappy, in case they disappoint some imaginary ideal. We speak of Gross National Happiness as though it were our pride, but maybe it’s become a kind of prison too.

We need honesty. Real connection, not just to our mountains and rivers, but to each other. Maybe if we stopped trying so hard to be happy, we could find a way to be real. Maybe that’s where love begins.