Emily Parker spoke with author Stephan Bauman about his new book 'Break Open the Sky', learning what really brings happiness from those we would usually dismiss, and how to choose love over fear.

There were several documentaries on Netflix and other places on happiness. What you find is that the people that are supposed to be the most happy aren't necessarily always happy, and those that are in conditions and places that we would describe as very difficult, sometimes are actually happier than we are.

This question of what makes someone happy is a question that people have been pursuing for generations, but I try to tackle that a little bit in the book, especially in the context of another question, which is, which people are afraid?

I've often found that people who should be less afraid are not. In fact they're more fearful. Those that should be more afraid are not as afraid as you think; people that are living on the edge.

In some ways the book is sort of lessons from the edge; lessons from the people that we regard as maybe not having wisdom, but when in fact it's often the people that are on the margins, who are disenfranchised, that have loads of wisdom.

We can take in and really shape our own lives and can realign our priorities, so that happiness becomes more possible for those of us who are wondering why we are not as happy as we thought we would be.

Emily: You also say in the book, "Someone can be happy even when their basic needs aren't met." How can people get to that point and live in a place where fear doesn't hold them back?

Stephan: There was a thing years ago that came out, that still dominates a lot of thinking when it comes to psychology; it's called Maslow's hierarchy. It basically says that until people's basic needs are met, people can't go to the next level and think about some of their aspirations, dreams, or hopes.

I've lived a number of years in different parts of the world, and what we find, and what researchers have found, is that people who are struggling, that are poor, often will sacrifice even some of their basic needs so that they can invest in their dreams and hopes. They sort of leapfrog Maslow's hierarchy and show that the theory doesn't hold. It basically says that happiness, dreams, or hopes are sometimes far different than we think; the quality of them and their substance.

It's about learning from those folks that we would tend to dismiss. Having lived in a Western country, a more developed society, there's a whole depth of wisdom there that we can learn from when it comes to what we should be pursuing in life; when it comes to faith and when it comes to happiness, things that are most important to us. Those same people often carry less fear as well. It's a very insightful set of data that I uncovered over the years.

Emily: So for yourself then, when have you chosen love over fear and how have you done that?

Stephan: We've lived abroad for a number of years, but we're just back in our own country.

Even the past couple of years, when it comes to people from, let's say the Middle East, a lot of people are afraid to reach out and talk to people, because maybe they look like someone who was considered a terrorist. These kinds of things really plague many people today in the United States.

I don't want to underestimate the violence around the world. I don't want to underestimate the terrorist incidents. So many people have kids and they're afraid and I get that. There's been school shootings here in the United States, so it's complicated, not just by international terrorism, but our own domestic violence and our issue with gun violence in the United States. So there's a lot of reasons to fear, and I don't want to sound trite or underestimate those things. At the same time, it can become debilitating and paralysing.

Families that I've met here in my town, my city here in Michigan, or when we lived in Washington DC, who are from a totally different country, the question that I faced and have faced is how am I going to see them? Will I take that risk and reach out to them and get to know them and understand them?