The road to happiness

Is there happiness? Is it a myth, an abstraction, or something that can actually be achieved? And if it is possible to conquer happiness, what does it depend on? From what each one does? From the circumstances that surround us? Or what chance brings our life closer?

For some reason, perhaps foreseeable, the topic of happiness was absent from the texts of almost all the teachers of psychology and philosophy for many years. It is evident that it was not due to the fact that only a few were interested in being happy; rather it seemed that almost everyone (philosophers and therapists included) agreed that there was nothing to add to what common sense reported. From that premise (false, by the way), officially touching the subject was a guarantee of foolishness and little depth.

What is the path that leads us to happiness?

Fortunately, in the last decade the topic has become basic again. for all of us who study the human condition for practical and positive purposes. It is important to us to know what happiness is, and to those who listen and read it, it is important to know more about how to achieve it.

Happiness is associated with pleasure, with material possessions… But we know people who have a lot of money and are not happy

Also with joy, with laughter, with comfort and with luxuries; and for this reason many people in the world, pursuing the supreme well-being, fight every day and strive to accumulate as much of everything as possible, believing that in this way they will be able to be happy.

And yet, we meet people who have more money than we could ever dream of, an enviable life, and possessions we wish they would at least share with us, but who often declare that they are not happy.

Among these people there are also suicides, psychosomatic illnessesdepression and, also and above all, drug addiction, self-abandonment and family breakups.

In ancient Greece, the fight of the time was already posed in extreme terms:

Was happiness the exclusive preserve of those capable of facing their destiny with a vocation of sacrifice and strength to endure inevitable suffering, as the Stoics defended? Or was happiness the property of those who, following Epicurus, lived in bacchanalia, enjoying all earthly pleasures and in an almost permanent celebration, giving themselves permission to live like the gods, as their teacher proclaimed?

Happiness is something very tangible

Let’s start here by establishing a point that is unquestionable to me, although it is far from universally accepted:

Happiness is a fact, something real, possible and attainable, and not an unattainable horizon nor a virtual reference… as long as we are capable of abandoning a priori the irremediable association that we make of it with pleasure, laughter, happiness or revelry. And I say more:

Happiness is feasible as long as it is not necessarily subject to what is happening to us at the moment

Starting from this, we can and should work in sync with our desire to be happy, emptying us of taboos and prohibitions, both real and imaginary, both external and internal. We must take care of disarming the traps we learned to set for ourselves.

We must also leave behind, if possible into oblivion, unhealthy habits that do not let us enjoy life and that prevent us from being as happy as we can and deserve. I like to think of happiness as a conjunction of two factors:

The compromised choice of a path. A certain way of going through it.

And little else… Surely that’s why I argue with those who think of it as a place of arrival or as a personal achievement.

Happiness is not so much in the success of having achieved the goal that I set for myself, as in the fact of having enjoyed the journey

I could even say that for me, at least that pleasant sensation, is currently more linked to serenity than to enjoyment.. If it were not so, it would be enough to imitate the stupid man who buys a pair of shoes two sizes smaller than the size of his feet and smacks his lips thinking about how happy he will be when he arrives home and finally feels alone the pleasure to take them off.

If the only pleasure of my work was measured in the result of the sales in the bookstores or exclusively in the subsequent comment of the readers and readers, all the people who work would be missing out on a great part of the happiness that comes from doing it.

True happiness has little or nothing to do with our possessions, at least with those that can be bought with money…

A story about happiness

Once upon a time there was a king whose wealth and power were so immenseso immense, as their sadness and unease were immense.

“I will give half of my kingdom to whoever manages to help me heal the anxieties of my sad nights,” he said one fine day.

Perhaps more interested in the money they could get than in the king’s health, the court advisers decided to go on a campaign and not stop until they found the cure for the real suffering. From the ends of the earth they sent for the most prestigious sages and the most powerful magicians of that time, to help them find the remedy they longed for so much to recover their majesty.

But it was all in vain, no one knew how to heal the monarch.

One afternoon, finally, an old wise man appeared and told them:

“If you find a completely happy man in the kingdom, you can cure the king.”. It has to be someone who feels totally satisfied, lacks nothing and has access to everything he needs.

“When you find him,” continued the old man, “ask him for his shirt and bring it to the palace.” Tell the king to sleep a whole night dressed only in that garment. I assure you that in the morning he will wake up cured.

The councilors were fully engaged and with complete dedication to the search for a happy man, although they knew that the task would not be easy. Indeed, the man who was rich was sick; he who was in good health was poor. That rich and healthy man, he complained about her wife, and this one, about her children.

All the interviewees agreed that something was missing to be totally happy, although they never agreed on what they lacked. Finally, very late one night, a messenger arrived at the palace. They had found the man so intensely sought.

He was a humble peasant who lived to the north, in the most arid area of ​​the kingdom. When the monarch was informed of the find, full of joy he ordered that the man’s shirt be brought to him immediately, in exchange for which they should give the peasant whatever he asked for.

The envoys immediately went to that man’s house to buy him the shirt. and, if necessary, they said to themselves, they would take it from him by force…

The king took a long time to heal from his sadness. In fact, his illness worsened when he found out that the happiest man in his kingdom, perhaps the only totally happy one, was so poor, so poor, so poor… that he didn’t even own a shirt.

the path of serenity

There are no magic formulas or infallible recipes to achieve happiness. But there is a first step to take: be aware that there is possible and necessary happiness.

My dear friend and teacher, the Argentine writer Marcos Aguinis, told me one afternoon, while we shared the trip back to Buenos Aires: “I like your idea of ​​happiness as a path. There are many who define life itself as a course without a port… They don’t realize that the port is precisely the end of life”.

Happiness, for a seeker like me (and like you too), is walking the path, being encouraged to discover life every day

And dare to live it, touch it and also –why not?– dare to feel the pain when it comes to us. What’s more, I don’t think that you necessarily stop being happy when something sad and painful happens to you. I think you can be sad without feeling unhappy, something quite different.

Happiness is more than an illusion of poetsmuch more than a promise from the leaders and, definitely, much more than the best dream our parents could have had.

For me it is the serenity that you feel when you are sure that you are on the right path, moving with pleasure in the chosen direction.

Happiness is not tied to having a good time, nor to spending all day laughing, dancing or singing. In any case, stretching the metaphor, happiness is not in the fact of singing a beautiful song, but in knowing that I am capable of enjoying each note while I sing.