Responsibility. For most of us, that word conjures up images of duty and toil. When are you going to grow up and learn some responsibility? Boring routines and obligations: that’s what being a responsible adult is about. No wonder we shy away from the concept.

But is that accurate? Is caring for something so much that you take responsibility for it necessarily an act of drudgery?

Before we can answer those questions, we need to consider that there are different kinds of responsibilities, and some are more rewarding than others. Taking care of a beloved child is one thing; having to clean the garage is another.

An example: I used to own a car, and frankly, I hated it. I might just have a really small tolerance for “stuff” responsibility, but to me, owning a car felt like nothing more than an endless to-do list filled with unimaginably boring tasks: change the oil, deal with the registration, find out what that funny noise is. Blech.

The responsibility of car ownership didn’t appeal to me at all. But give me a friend in need and I am there 100%. The difference? Love. I love my friends (and yes I know that some people love their cars, too). The key is to look at our lives honestly and ask ourselves, how much of what we have to do every day stems from love, versus simply from having too much junk we don’t care about that still requires attention?

Once we know what’s important to us, then taking responsibility for it is only natural. In fact, it’s the ultimate act of love.

Committing oneself—whether to a child, a project, or a partnership—is a leap of faith. When we say, Yes, I will take responsibility for this, we are aligning ourselves with some of humankind’s best qualities: care, attention, and creativity. We are saying, I love this so much that I will ensure it thrives, no matter what. We take a vow to do whatever needs to be done. When we decide we will see it through, we express our grown-up-ness in its highest form.

Now, our culture doesn’t particularly value grown-up-ness. Maturity rarely makes people famous; wisdom doesn’t sell magazines; commitment may or may not be rewarded. But we have come to a point in our history where we need realer, more humane dreams than the ideal held up by society and the media. Overvaluing big houses, shiny cars, and handbags that cost as much as shiny cars has brought our society to the brink of destruction. It’s time for us to go deeper.

To me, the saddest part is that these shiny things don’t make us happy anyway. Past a certain point of having enough of what we need and at least some of what we want in a material sense, more stuff just means more responsibility of the drudge variety. Biggie Smalls had it right when he said, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”

The truth is that we’ve spent our precious lives chasing the wrong goals, and now we are tired and worn down from the weight of achieving them. I say this not to lay blame on anyone—the situation is what it is—but just to acknowledge where we are, so we can find a way out.

So, the question is, how do we turn this around? Is there a way to reframe our thinking so that we chase the right goals—those that truly do contribute to our happiness and the health of the planet? C’mon, you are reading The Sunny Way—of course there is!

It starts by asking, what really makes us happy? One hint: it’s not giant cars and big ole TVs. Studies show that, past that point of having enough (it’s hard to be happy on an empty stomach), the list is pretty simple: Spending time with family and friends; short commutes; freedom to make our own choices; feeling more or less equal with others in our society.

When we shift our goals from money and power to true human happiness, amazing things can happen. In the city of Bogota, Colombia, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa demonstrated this to be true. He made the happiness of his constituents the number one priority of his administration, bringing clean water, pedestrian walkways, and efficient public transportation to hundreds of thousands of people. In doing so, a new sense of self-respect and happiness was sparked in the city. “In everything we did, we tried to increase equality, to maximize integration,” he said. “In this way we are also constructing democracy.”

Peñalosa took responsibility (and a lot of heat!) for making these changes. And he did it out of a sense of love for his city and the people who live there.

What he was able to achieve was impressive, but it is no more than what each of us can do when we fall in love with the future enough to take responsibility for making it happy, vibrant, and magnificent. Doing this doesn’t mean sacrifice, it just means rethinking what we really want. Handbags for health and happiness sounds like a fair trade to me. What do you think?