Notice everything to be happy

Recently, I was walking home on a typical day here in Belgium: gray, dark, and devoid of surprises. I've lived here for a few years now, and I’ve grown accustomed to this melancholic sky.

Through my headphones, one of the many songs saved on Spotify was playing, randomly chosen. At 22, I still haven’t figured out what makes me like a song. I have this habit of listening to the same set of tracks on repeat for short periods until one day, for no apparent reason, I wake up and switch playlists.

I was walking alone, lost in thought, when, about five minutes from home, I noticed a tree. It was tall, not particularly lush, but with well-distributed branches, like an elegant and intricate drawing. I stopped to observe it. I thought about how difficult it must be for a tree to grow and survive in a place with so little sunlight. Its leaves, green and yellow, danced to the rhythm of a gentle wind—an unknowing creator of a spectacle I won’t forget. Looking closer, I noticed something surprising: every leaf had a similar shape, yet each was unique, different from the others. In that moment, I realized I would likely never see those same leaves perform that exact dance again. It was a simple, yet unrepeatable moment.

This experience made me reflect on Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The German thinker devoted much thought to the nature of happiness and suffering. For Schopenhauer, life is marked by an endless cycle of unfulfilled desires: we are in constant pursuit of happiness, only to discover that once we achieve it, we immediately start searching for something else. The only temporary escape from this eternal pendulum between boredom and pain is aesthetic contemplation. When we detach from our desires and observe the world as pure spectators, we can grasp its essential beauty, forgetting, for a moment, the suffering tied to our will.

Watching that tree, immersing myself in the dance of its leaves, gave me a sense of calm and wonder akin to what Schopenhauer described.

I often wonder how humans can find happiness. I ask myself what the meaning of life is if not to endlessly chase it. Lately, though, I’ve realized that perhaps happiness isn’t something to seek far away: it’s already with us. All it takes is to observe, to open our eyes, and to learn to appreciate what is unique and special around us—the aesthetic contemplation Schopenhauer spoke of.

The concept of the "Xenoverso," expressed by the rapper Rancore, is everything that happens but escapes our awareness. Think about your breathing: have you ever paused to notice how the air entering and leaving your body produces a sound? Every breath has a faint, unique sound. You’ve probably never paid attention to it, yet that sound has always existed.

It has always lived with you, perhaps for so long that you’ve begun to ignore it. This is the concept of the Xenoverso: that faint sound, that overlooked detail, was there all along. In our daily lives, there are a thousand details living around us that we ignore. It takes so little to bring them from the Xenoverso into our present, making them visible, tangible, and learning to truly experience them.

In the end, what Schopenhauer called aesthetic contemplation and what Rancore defines as the Xenoverso seem like two sides of the same coin: both invite us to notice and fully live what normally escapes our attention. While Schopenhauer sees an antidote to suffering in detaching from desires through beauty, the Xenoverso pushes us to rediscover that same beauty in the hidden details of daily life.

Perhaps happiness is nothing more than this ability to stop, observe, and let ourselves be amazed by what surrounds us—finding in every moment the wonder we so often ignore. Let’s learn to appreciate what we’ve forgotten exists, what we’ve left in the Xenoverso, too busy chasing desires that will never make us happy.