Happiness is more inner peace than joy

Ten years ago, when I was about to publish the fourth book in the series of roadmaps, a great friend, writer and storyteller, Vivi García, sent me a story she wrote that perhaps not coincidentally talked about being happy and open the text of The road to happiness.

The wonderful story is this:

One afternoon, a long time ago, God called a meeting. One specimen of each species was invited. Once gathered, and after hearing many complaints, God asked each one a simple question:“If you could choose, what would you like to be?”

Everyone present responded without holding back and with an open heart:

The giraffe said that he would like to be a panda bear. The elephant asked to be a mosquito. The eagle, snake. The hare wanted to be a tortoise; and the turtle, swallow. The lion begged to be a cat; and the otter, capybara. The horse, orchid. And the whale requested permission to be a thrush…

It was the turn of the man, who incidentally had come from walking the path of truth. He paused, and enlightened exclaimed:“Lord, I would like to be… happy.”

A wonderful synthesis that in the beauty of its poetry says almost everything we should know about the great challenge of being happy.

What is inner peace?

It makes us know that happiness It has nothing to do with the desire to stop being what each one is.but, on the contrary, with being authentically oneself.

It makes us know that the path that leads to the desired happiness always begins with the decision to be happyassuming responsibility for that choice.

Finally, it opens our eyes to an unquestionable truth: few things exist more desirable and important in this life than the desire to be happy.

If we were told that we can make only one dream come true, none would be more appropriate than the desire to be happy.

Far from the wonder of this story by Vivi, for those of us who do not have the gift of poetry, it remains to explain with our learned words the meaning we give today to the much-sought-after happiness.

responsibility costs

Every time I say in front of a group, be they friends, colleagues or patients, that inevitably we are responsible for our happiness and, in addition, responsible for how we are doing in life, I hear the murmur of disagreement from some of those present and the protesting claim of almost everyone else.

Sometimes, perhaps just to provoke the debate that interests me a lot, I dare to ask, almost knowing the answer:

-What’s going on? They disagree?

With some hesitation and a lot of courtesy, the answer is always the same:

“Yeah… well… somehow…”

And I, as always, read in that “diplomatic” response that, beyond their doubts, they believe that it is not, but they know that it is.

And it is that we all know, although it hurts us to accept it:

By action or by omission, by prior or subsequent decision, by letting go or by having produced it, we are always part of what happens to us.

But of course, it is very hard to accept it; well, no buts… perhaps it is because this declaration of unappealable involvement confronts us with the responsibility of changing what is not right… and not only in our microcosm, but in everyone’s life and all the time.

Maybe assume so much responsibility it forces us to accept a certain complicity in each of our frustrations. It hurts us, it annoys us, it irritates us and it upsets us that things do not happen as we dream, as we wish, as they should happen or as it would be convenient for us to happen.

In real life, every day, despite our complaints, things rarely turn out exactly as we wanted, and when they do, they don’t happen in the time frame we had imagined.

Our vital attitude and happiness

Doubt, indecision and fear hold us back too often to be able to act adequately in the face of the reality we are facing.

As if that were not enough, all around us are “the others”, who, by all rights, are pursuing their own dreams, not always willing to collaborate with us. Not to mention those who are neatly committed to boycotting the dreams of others.

Many times, the factual possibility that our wish comes true at this time it is practically nil. The truth is that, in the world of everyday life, we will always find difficulties, obstacles and limitations to make a dream come true, fulfill a wish or simply be able to continue on our way without losing our way.

We will have to choose more and more consciously between two attitudes:

Blame the outside and hope it changes, or make us part of the frustrating reality and be complicit in that change. That is to say:

Assume the responsibility of acting in coherence with my wishes by working actively, facing the cost and risk that the path entails

The tradition of all peoples contains their wisdom and it bequeaths it to us in customs, in ways of acting, in legends and in phrases that continue to surprise us for our prejudice and a tendency to despise the primitive, denying that we came from there and that we are.

Native Americans from all over America they adored the force of nature and sang praises to the Sun, the Moon, the Wind… They implored a good harvest, a benevolent winter or the favor of the winds to take them to the most prosperous shores. They relied on his favors with devotion; however, they did not stop making efforts so that those gifts could be manifested in all their fullness.the araucanosIn the southernmost South of Latin America, they believed that the gods rewarded those who perfectly cleared the land of weeds and those who traced the furrows of the plow in perfect symmetry. The divine reward was to make the harvest more abundant.Sufi people, very far geographically, but not so much conceptually, very sensibly, he recommends to each of his men: “Trust a lot in God… but tie your camel yourself.”sioux indians They also have a phrase that I return to time and time again and that was shared with me by a man who is proud of his race in the United States:

“It will always be easier to make a pair of sandals than to want to upholster the road with leather”

It may not matter the sequence of eventsbut it is evident that the most effective of tasks gets along very well with the time you dedicate to it, with the interest that it arouses in you and with your best learning or ability in the use of the best tools.

Happiness is similar to inner well-being

It’s not about chasing what we don’t have nor to fantasize about how happy we would be if we did. It is about understanding once and for all that happiness depends on what happens from the skin to the inside, much more than what happens from the skin to the outside.

We should remember every morning that being happy is not necessarily related to laughterjoy, dancing or celebrating (although those of us who know we are happy certainly laugh more, celebrate life and are almost always ready to share the pleasure of life with others by dancing and singing).

For me and many of my teachers, happiness is more like inner peace than joy, It does not have so much to do with getting somewhere, but rather with moving forward in the direction of what gives meaning to our lives; it is not related to what we achieved, but to the certainty of not being lost.

These few words may perhaps clarify why happiness is found by everyone in their own personal way and why is it so difficult for my course to coincide one hundred percent with that of others. How good it would be to learn and accept that those decisions that allow me, perhaps, to feel the happiest of mortals may not help others to feel happy even for a moment.

We cannot make others happy, and no one can make us happy. No one can do for you what only you can do for you

And one of those things is to take care of being happy. On my own path, one day I came across this little text that I am evoking today to end this note:

“With everything I had, I went out one day to buy a happy ending, but since I couldn’t find any that would fill me up completely, I decided to invest everything in buying myself a new beginning.”