Temat: Share your writing - TREASURE HUNTERS

TREASURE HUNTERS

It took me 24 years before I realized that happiness is a key value, which I should strive for in my life. Now I wonder how come it occurred to me so late. Yet, it sounds so obvious that one my think it’s a joke, but I’m really deadly serious. It doesn’t mean that for all this time I was not aware of its importance, but I used to understand it more in terms of a cliché, kind of a general term or an idea, neither worth of much trouble nor deep reflection. And I think it was not even because I felt happy enough as a child, which I really did, but perhaps because a tendency to analyze reality this way simply came to me with time.

It seems that in a contemporary fast-moving world more and more people tend to demand simple, universal and quick solutions for everything including happiness. Many guidebooks try to meet them halfway by offering sure-fire panaceas, the easier the better.

The one I like the most for its comprehensiveness, simplicity and humor is Albert Einstein’s famous equation, which states that if ”a” stands for happiness, then a = x + y + z, where x = work, y = play, z = keeping your mouth shut. Nevertheless, unlike him, some other thinkers are far away from claiming that happiness is a privilege of working people only.

Zen monks for example have found their own recipe for happiness in spending all their life listening to the sound of growing rocks. Although, It is widely known that meditation might be really invigorating, after one 15-min session I realized that contemplation of everlasting here and now doesn’t fully satisfy my vision of happiness. Perhaps, it is reserved only for more enlightened individuals than I was. Anyway, before falling into a state of nirvana I decided to investigate the subject a bit more.

Then I thought, who could tell me more about happiness than the richest person in the world. To my surprise I found out that the total asset of Warren Buffet, the most successful investor in the history exceed the annual GDP of more than half of the countries in the world. Yet, what surprised me even more was that the same guy in spite of being so fabulously rich still lives in 50 year-old house worth hardly 31 000 $, drives hail-damaged car bought at a bargain price and usually eats junk food in McDonald’s. He claims that possessions and consumer goods can improve our life quality but only to some extent, and if managed unwisely, may bring more troubles than benefits.
This approach may remind the philosophy of Diogenes, the ancient cynic who lived in a barrel, and whose reply to Alexander the Great’s proposal of granting his every wish was: “you can step aside a little so as not to keep the sunshine from me”. His provocative attitude surely stimulates to thinking but a common sense tells me that finally it encourages more to be sceptic than cynic. Isn’t it too radical and naive simplification to think that the more things we get rid of the more happiness we receive?

The biographies of purported embodiments of luck and success like Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston or Marlin Monroe, etc. indeed exemplify that wealth and fame doesn’t guarantee total fulfillment and may be easily misleading. As the Arabs say “The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”

Nonetheless, I doubt if any of these examples is sufficient to persuade anyone to leave the rat race and forego money. What does then make us so crazy to desire them so much? It won’t be a revelation if I say they are only a mean to achieve something else. Material needs seem to be only the basic ones in the more complex hierarchy and if satisfied at some level, have only insignificant influence on our well-being. Isn’t it actually status, respect, recognition, love, safety, peace, sexual intimacy, health, affiliation, morality or self-realization that we expect to get in return.

Are these values, as cynics claim, really source of suffer and pain, which prevents us from tranquility and happiness? Paradoxically, one have to admit that Diogenes indeed managed to achieve most of them without money, though, I still doubt if his life approach could encourage most of us to abandon our dreams and goals.
What made Diogenes happy as a tramp and what makes others aspire to be Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet or Pope Francis? Where do our aspirations come from and why is it so difficult to give them up and throw out from our consciousness? Some people enigmatically call it a vocation. Carl Gustav Yung, the pioneer of modern psychology and psychotherapy claims that they are deeply rooted in our subconsciousness in the form of so called culturally conditioned archetypes, which force us to adjust our behavior and attitudes to social expectations and to expect particular ones in return. But how to find oneself in the bush of mutually contradictory expectations, behavior patterns and role models? Is that mean we are just passive products of culture and civilization? If yes, how could such robots experience happiness having no mind, free will and ego?

I spent hours on Steve Jobs thick biography, before I jumped to the uplifting conclusion that I wouldn’t like to change my live with this widely adored and successful man not for all the world. I realized that although he was tremendous, unquestionable role model in some business areas, there is still thing or two he could learn from me. He was not even half as good dancer as I am and I bet I would beat him in a keeping-mouth-shut competition, telling nothing about his mood swings and emotional problems, which I’m happily free of so far. Wasn’t that a voice of my enlightened ego whispering “cogito ergo sum” from within the bush of archetypes included in the book?

This thought was accompanied with an incredible feeling of profound joy and gratitude for the simple act of being and understanding who I am. Perhaps the same, which the Zen monks experience uninterruptedly throughout all their live, and perhaps the same, which artists find in an act of creation or sportsmen in a physical effort.
Then I realized that each one of us was given a unique chance to write its own story and that a simple act of self-awareness, understanding and consistence with our inner voice might be a sufficient reason to experience joy, calmness and fulfilment. I believe everyone was born a genius with special talents and creative potential to perform incredible thinks. However, during socialization and internalization processes, we often lose our natural genius turning ourselves into slaves of other people expectations, which sometimes have nothing to do with what we are really predestined for. Against our will and nature we wrap ourselves up in subsequent personas in order to avoid punishments and get awards. And this misunderstanding of who we are may be a source of tension, suffer and pain. Peter Drucker claims “the greatest achievements come to those, who know themselves – their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.“ Isn’t it actually the key ingredient of happiness, to discover our inner voice, give it credit and take off the shackles of social dependence in order to find self-fulfillment and express oneself freely? Anthony de Mello seemed to now this whilst reducing his recipe for happiness only to three words, which are as follows:

1. UNDERSTAND
2. UNDERSTAND
3. UNDERSTAND

Nevertheless, it’s enough to lift your head and look into the sky on a starry night to understand that some things are incomprehensible. This constant anxious feeling of uncertainty and longing for something greater and bigger than we are, fear from death and insignificance of our efforts in the face of universe magnitude, have tormented people for ages. Isn’t it actually this feeling, which prevents us from unruffled happiness? It seems that Saint Augustine aptly expressed it saying: “You have made us for yourself, o Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”.

This is how we come to the immemorial questions on who we are, where we come from and where we are going to. Perhaps some questions simply cannot be answered to stir our imagination. Surely, not without a reason the most sexy scene in the film history was hailed the one, in which Rita Hayworth takes off a glove from her hand. What would push us people forward if we had handed every answer on a plate? I believe that the omniscient God knew the same as Sixto Rodriquez and all males in the universe do know, that the “sweetest kiss you ever got is the one you’ve never tasted”.