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October 8, 2010
“What lies before us and what lies behind
us are nothing compared to what lies within us”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A song written by Bob Marley, (here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note, don’t worry, be happy…), the title of this article and the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted above are all reflections of a recent school in Psychology known as Positive Psychology. America is peppered with marketing slogans and other ploys relating almost everything to the state of happiness.
Businesses desire to make customers happy. They believe that it is a portal for profit. Parents desire that their children be happy because it is considered an element for a healthy growth. Happiness is oftentimes considered as the quintessential motivation for maximum performance, optimal well-being and a satisfied life.
To this effect, motivational businesses geared towards a lifestyle of success has proliferated the corporate world – from sales to advertising, from network marketing through franchise enterprise, and from self-help money management ideas through self-employed wealth ventures.
In fact, in a couple of days, there will be a huge motivational event in Chicago with celebrity speakers like Zig Ziglar. Words like abundance, wealth, prosperity and financial abundance are mainstays for the commercialized version of happiness.
From the motivation to be happy, we go to the inspiration to be happy. It is here where we hear the lingo of dreams, the jargon of visions, goals and different quadrants of prioritized activities. Is this the era of a pleasant life, the optimal experience, and the age of satisfaction despite the current economic recession? Or is it because of this that we are currently suffering from this economic chaos – a pseudo sense of happiness that triggers the wrong reasons?
This finally leads me to what Ralph Waldo Emerson said. What lies within us is larger than anything we see before us, wider than anything that chases us or grander than anything that attracts us. The only problem is that what lies within is unseen. And for not being visible, we regard it as intangible, as something unknown, almost a mystery we prefer to ignore or take for granted.
Do we want to be happy? Of course we do. It has been the object of mankind’s quest from the day of his inception. Although it was treated in different concepts and managed in various forms, happiness has always been the quiet stranger behind every man’s efforts, sometimes disguised as a need and sometimes obsessed as a want.
Tragically, the perverted view of this search has led so many to unspeakable misery where souls were lost and where friend vanished. The elusive search is still elusive, still undefined, still unreached. And it seems that history has played a trick on our puny human understanding for which battles were fought and lives were claimed all for the sake of national security, another euphemism for collective happiness.
Amongst those coming from places of poverty and scarcity, the level of happiness is attached to the bare necessities of subsistence. In our own language we describe this as “makakaraos din”, an experience we could get by with. Towards the end of day, Mang Kiko and Aling Iska will be thankful for the food on the table, the roof over their head and a dozen good children to help them with their old age. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe is a billionaire who just took his own life for losing more than five billion dollars from badly invested assets while he left his beneficiaries with seven billion dollars he could have enjoyed through his old age.
Countless stories are heard that could only convince about the relative sense of a search that does not exist except within the depths of what we already have. The reason as to why happiness is so elusive is perhaps the way we have been conditioned to find it. To make things worse, perhaps the proper way that we could have found it was misdiagnosed as wrong. Wealth has been defined as having more than what we need. Abundance has been described as the possession of wealth. Possession has been restricted to that of the physical.
We do not completely understand that what we have is sometimes what we already are. And what we are is more than enough than anything we think we might still need. And then mediocrity sets in, another behavioral fallacy that dispels the reality of happiness from taking place. Mediocrity is static. Happiness is dynamic. The moment we do nothing, the moment we cross our arms and lock ourselves in the false gratitude of self-elation, happiness caves in. And then our doctors diagnose us with depression. They might be right. Self-pity could be depressing. Comparing ourselves with others could be even more depressing. Yet, when we think of others, when we share with others, when we extend ourselves to others, the more we forget about our own misery, the less we think of our complacency. The less we become mediocre, the happier we become.
Looking from within is tough, because it could come in the form of a narcissistic tendency. Yet looking within does not exactly mean, looking at ourselves. It means finding what we have, through starting our journey from what we own defining our lives based on who we are, reaching our goals from what we have, and realizing our dreams from what our dreams are calling us to be. Is this too spiritual? Yes it is. It has to be, because the core of our essence exceeds the limitations of anatomy and the boundaries of physiology. Does it matter whether we are believers or not? It does, because faith is the only evidence of things unseen. It is the only substance of matters we hope for (Hebrews 11:1-2). For anyone who does not believe, it is a common premise that we are pure matter. And when matter dies, everything with it perishes into destruction. When matter destroys itself, then why bother to be happy? Really? Is this all there is to it?
Positive Psychology is a scientific attempt to find and nurture human genius and talent latent within an individual. Right at the very core of who we are, are the tools we need to start with our search. And if we do it right, the longest distance we need to travel is nothing else but a visit to the closest mirror far beyond the images that we could see.
In simple terms, before we listen to all those motivational tapes and attend any seminar about abundance or speeches about prosperity, look inside. It is near. It is accessible. And most of all, it is free.