I ask Hilmar how he feels when he’s composing music. “I lose track of time when composing. It is a blissful activity. You are doing something you couldn’t imagine doing. It is bigger than yourself. You are enlarging yourself.” These are the classic signs of flow, as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihalyi. The line between the actor and the act blurs and, in some cases, disappears entirely. There is no dancer. There is only dancing. Flow is not the same as happiness. In fact, when we interrupt flow to take stock of our happiness, we lose both.
