Pursuit of happines
Every night before I fall asleep I do a mental exercise that I recommend to everyone. I take stock of the day that is ending and try to understand if they were happy, how much and when I was and what, if not, were the problems that led me to be unhappy. And do you know what the hardest lesson I have learned is? That everything that really makes me happy has come to me for free, and what I miss to be happy cannot be bought. An unexceptionable lesson from an ethical point of view: but very difficult to accept, especially for me. You know, when a certain level of economic well-being is reached, I admit, a sort of omnipotence syndrome takes over in us, that is, the one that derives from the feeling that everything in life can be purchased in some way.
But heck it isn’t. Things like happiness, feelings, serenity, satisfaction and fulfillment are not goods on the market. And the trouble is, I realize, that not everyone has understood this. Looking around I see that many, too many people who live every single day lives that, to define shit would be an understatement, to achieve a material well-being on which all their chips of happiness are betting. They think they will be happy when they get the increase at work, when they buy the house they saw in the agency and for which they will be in debt for life (making sure that the above increase is no longer useful), or when they buy a bigger car.
And so they struggle like mules, living life with their heads down so as not to be discouraged by looking at their distant goal. If they are lucky maybe one day, after long waits and hard work they reach it, but, guess what, they are not happy! If they are, it is an emotion that lasts a moment, maybe a day. But the next new goals, new dreams will demand new economic endeavors from them. And so on. It is not psychology. It is simply the mechanism of the consumer world. I don’t buy what I need, but I need to buy.
Aspire
To achieve the coveted happiness we all say we aspire to, we should get out of this wheel that makes us spin like hamsters. It takes a step to the side, not a step back. Just enough to stop us, look around us and, through a strong act of awareness, understand what makes us really happy. It is not an easy exercise because the aforementioned consumerism tends to boycott this exercise. It takes consistency in understanding what really makes us happy, it is not something trivial and automatic, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why there are so many unhappy people in the world. It’s not that he doesn’t strive for happiness. He just doesn’t know how to be happy. And it is something terrible.
I daily try to cultivate my pursuit of happiness. And every day I learn something more about my path. For example, I learned that “my” happiness is only “mine” and therefore no one can give me directions on how to reach it: this is why I have learned not to care what people say, not only those who judge me but also those who , with a positive spirit, they would like to suggest to them how to find my happiness. It does not work like this. It is a journey where you are the only one driving.
Lessons
I have learned that happiness is not in what I can buy. The money takes away the whims but does not fill loneliness and fears. For this reason, together with my current account, I am careful to nurture my friendships, especially those that I see purest and most disinterested.
I learned to cultivate my interests: first of all travel and photography, because I discovered that, while I find myself preparing a shot with my mirrorless camera in front of a new landscape, of a new country, I am happy, and a wrinkle of my smile shows it to the rest of the world.
I learned that despite the ups and downs I want, must and can find my happiness in the feelings that love is able to stimulate. It is an inconstant flow of emotions capable of taking you to the stars and suddenly throwing you down when things are not going well. But you know, in that tiny moment when you feel that love, and above all, you also feel it reciprocated, at that moment you just want to look at yourself in the mirror with your best smile and repeat the title of an old film that said: “ask me if I’m happy”.
