
Are you happy? Are you happy in your job? Are you happy in your relationship? Are you happy in your life? Are you happy with yourself?
Nowadays everyone is worried about happiness. Such is our concern that Harvard has a class about how to be happy since 2006. And the “gossiping ones” says it has become so popular that it won the audience to “Introduction to the Economy” which for a long time seemed to be the most popular class.
I was researching about the content of the class. In its beginnings the list of ideas about how to be happy seems to resemble certain habits to follow:
- Do some exercise
- Have a breakfast
- Thanks to life for all the good you have
- Be assertive
- Spend your money on experiences, not things
- Face your challenges
- Paste nice memories, phrases and photos of your loved ones everywhere
- Always greet and be kind to other people.
- Wear shoes that are comfortable for you
- Take care of your posture
- Listen to music
- Eat well
- Groom yourself and feel attractive
Personally, until now, I have done little exercise, I do not breakfast, someone can say my eating ways are not healthy: I love chamoys (hot chili powder, mexicans add to almost every food), I love dressing simply, I have no reminders or phrases anywhere, I seldom listen music and honestly, until my husband’s death I was the happiest woman in the entire universe.
It seems that “happiness” scholars realized that this was not enough, so they incorporated some more elements:
- Happiness is in the mind
- Cultivate Your Friends
- Have a Purpose
- Simplifies
- Meditate
- Allow yourself to be human
- Be yourself flexible as rubber
Even when I like this ones more than the other ones, in my reality I am a lucky woman to have very good friends, I have always had clarity of purpose, I usually meditate, I love my humanity, I think I am quite simple and resilient (although I will never be a rubber) and in the last 60 days I have felt the least happy woman in the universe, if for happiness we mean an “emotional state”.
Be happy in order to work better?
It has become such an obsession with happiness, reaching the point where we even think that if we are not happy we do not do well our work.
It does not matter that hundreds of years show that we can be efficient without being happy. According to modern studies our current society “needs” to be happy in order to work well. And not only that, we need to be happy and also we needs someone to take care of our happiness, hence the appearance of the “gefes” (managers of the collaborators’ happiness), formerly known as bosses, who has now the noble task of “making happy” to all its collaborators. Nothing more impossible in my eyes. (Translator’s note: in spanish, “jefe” means boss, an “gefe” has a ‘g’ instead a ‘j’, to recall they are managers now, “gestores” in spanish)
If we go to the dictionary and look over happiness word origin, we find it is an adjective that comes from the Latin “felix” and that means fertile, fecund. Its origin is in the agricultural world. (Translator’s note: in english, the origin of happiness word comes from happ, which is the old Norse happ: luck, chance).
It is said that in ancient Rome the word “felix” was used to describe the trees that gave many fruits and “infelix” for those who were infertile.
Later, two more words were used to refer to the term happiness: “fortunatus” that refers to someone “with luck or fortune” and “beautus” meaning “full of goods or wealth.”
It may be that from these two additional adjectives to define happiness many confusions have been created and people think that accumulating wealth will give them happiness or is simply a stroke of luck that not everyone can have.
To make matters worse, not only have we lost the original sense of the word, but we have overestimated it and become an idea of hedonism which, in many cases, seems to invite a world more unhappy than happy.
Happiness as self-responsibility
And to finish it off, at least in my eyes, we have made others responsible for our well-being. So if my boss is not “a good boss”, I can not be happy. If my girlfriend does not love me or my son does not behave well, either.
What would happen if we returned to the original meaning of the word? What would happen in your life if instead of being concerned about habits to follow or if your boss makes you happy or not, you just wonder how you can bear fruit?
What would happen if instead of looking for a hedonistic state of satisfaction you seek to make your life something useful, something that flourishes, something that contributes to social construction in the different systems in which you interact: family, work team, friends, couple, and so on?
The importance of co-creating even in the saddest moments
According to the Blumenstein Theory we are the co-creators of the world in which we participate through our contributions.
How do we contribute? With all our actions, with all our behaviors.
So the question that could emerge is: How do I want to behave in order to make my actions useful? And this does not mean that you do not enjoy it or have to suffer it, it just means you give it meaning to your doing.
Even if that sense is to give you that sense of enjoyment, joy that some call happiness. So you could explore: What do I like to do? What do I enjoy? What makes me feel good when I do it? Maybe you do not eat breakfast every day, but you will love a hot bath. Or do not always eat healthily and enjoy a few cazares (corn chips popular in Mexico) with chamoy.
And perhaps you can ask yourself how I feel useful, fruitful? I can assure you that even in the saddest and darkest times of your life (someone could say unhappy) you can feel happy (in the sense of useful and fruitful), if you choose.
All this I know from experience: today it is 60 days since the man with whom I was immensely happy (in the sense of joy and enjoyment) died and I have been deeply sad. However, no second I have stopped being happy (in the sense of fertility and fruit), because even in the darkest times I have tried to make my contribution useful and serve to build something good for someone, including me.
One last point. No one can make you fertile except yourself. So, in this look of “happiness” you can have a bad boss, an imperfect son, a couple with whom there are issues to solve, debts to cover and still be happy.
You may be surprised to see how this can change if your contributions change.
Plants that do not bloom, even if only the renewal of their own leaves, die. So, you are alive, what will you do with your life from this moment?
I wish you a 2017 absolutely fruitful!
By Katia
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