In Part 1, which I wrote in June 1, 2015, I ended "Happiness Is" with the last paragraph below:
This much we know. In any culture, from any region on earth, from the poorest to the wealthiest, from the most powerful to the ones barely able to defend their borders, the happiest from every population are the children. Yoda had it right when he said, albeit in Yoda speak, “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” You see if laughter is the side effect of happiness, children seem to have an unlimited amount of it. Not only that, children have the sincerest, most genuine form of laughter. I used to not pay attention until our grandchildren came to brighten our lives. Reader’s Digest was right all along with their monthly, “Laughter is the best Medicine”. If so, then children are the best portable carriers of it and they must be allowed to infect us all.
How different was five years ago? Anyone's perspective, attitude and insights will obviously have changed over time as can be expected. Situations change, personal predicaments altered and we find ourselves re-thinking. But do prerequisites for happiness change? Should our capacity to be happy be different from years ago? Should our aspirations for happiness change, even diminished as we get older?
Lets get this one out of the way first. In the U.S. today about half and half are happy and sad over the results of the last presidential election. Those from one side are ecstatic. Some from the other are outright furious and the country seems to be even more divided and the fissure appears to widen instead of closing.
Surfing through YouTube channels yesterday to stay away from cable news and editorial broadcasts I chanced upon what people will label a nerdy presentation. Julius Sumner Miller fits that nutty professor look of gray almost curly hair in desperate need of a good combing where dabs of brilliantine can be easily justified, if not required. He talks funny in a way but if you listen carefully his sense of humor is evident in the midst of making a scientific fact or nugget of information expressed a little differently, actually a little easily for any lay person. Mind you, he had been asked to lecture several times at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The one I watched was a video done seven years ago, titled "The Pendulum and Other Oscillating Things". I heard for the first time too that there is such a word as pendula.
Aside from the familiar stuff on pendulum from physics in high school and engineering class, he demonstrated literally with props, devices, bench top contraptions by presenting to the audience what he always fondly calls enchanting examples of the wonders of physics.
However, I saw something else. The pendulum is a great metaphor for defining a perspective in how we should all look at life and the world. We need to do it with more frequency as a mental and emotional balm because when all is said and done the pendulum swings one way and it will swing the other, as assuredly as the sun will rise tomorrow and for countless tomorrows to come. Whichever side you were last November 3, count this as one infallible phenomenon - the pendulum will swing the other way in not so distant future. That is the way perspectives work. Look at anything this way but as inevitable as the next sunrise, it will look another way in no time.
Goodness, we got that out of the way. Whew!
The prerequisites to happiness do not, should not change for any of us under many circumstances, the last election included. Granted, anyone of us will at one time or another encounter unexpected circumstances, sometimes far beyond what is humanly possible to cope with. But not always necessarily true because only in death is the possible ever completely out of reach; except for those whose faith extends beyond mortality. But we will not go there. You will not be thinking about the end of possibilities since you are obviously much alive; you are reading this, after all.
We should be like children again - unencumbered by a lot of adult prejudices, pre-conceived notions and compulsion to worry. In worst cases the proclivity to worry becomes incessantly obsessive and emotionally incapacitating. This reminds me of Frenchy the driver who drove our tour bus for near ten days at and around Yellowstone National Park. Frenchy immigrated from France and he wanted us to call him that. Frenchy printed on an 8-1/2 by 11 poster to the driver's side window to his left that read (per my recollection):
"Half of what we worry about does not come true; the other half we have no control over, so why worry then?"
Worrying too is like running in place. You don't go anywhere but you waste a lot of time and energy.
This goes to show that if we eliminate half of the things we worry about we will be left with those we can't control. Of course, this is easier said than done. But is it really? Well, let's get to it.
In Paul's letter to the people of Corinth, he said in First Corinthians 13:11,
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child..."
I am obviously taking Paul's message slightly out of context here but I hope you agree with the point I will be making.
Every mother knew, even from the days of our cave-dwelling ancestors, that her baby's only prerequisite to happiness was to be warm and dry and well fed. Hundreds of thousands of years later through today, discounting the fact that every baby does not really know to have any prerequisite at all, we know too well that our happiest moments in life were those when we were young children. Those were the days when our needs were the least, we knew little about what to want, and so there was less to worry about, if at all. That was the key to how easily we met happiness - the freedom from worry.
Many of the happiest people in the world, according to researches in anthropology and statistics, do not live in the richest, most advanced, most sophisticated countries. Granted that the state of happiness is all relative, there is one piece of data that you might find interesting: the global distribution of the rates of suicide by country. I know this is quite a leap, even morbid, but psychologists tell us that suicides are extreme responses to pressure, desperation, frustration and the ultimate resignation or escape from life. Let's look at the data.
In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) compiled the data this way. The global rate of suicide was 10.2 per 100,000 population. Europe registered at 15. 4; Southeast Asia at 13.2 while the lowest was at the Eastern Mediterranean at 3.4, with Africa at 7.4. You can see that the lowest rate was not from the wealthiest region. In fact, both Africa and Eastern Med are farthest from the top of the economic scale of wealth and power.
Even more interesting is when we go by individual country from all 183 registered nations. Russia at No.3, and like the top two above it (Guyana and Lesotho) they tripled the global rate of suicides per 100,000. By the way, Russia - a super military power - also has the highest rate in alcoholism, which is often associated with escapism.
Interestingly, the U.S.A., holder of the top economic power (arguably with China) was at No.34, 13.4 per 100 K way above the global average; The Philippines, one among the poorest regions was at No. 159 with only 3.7 per 100 K.
Get this. The lowest by individual nations are from "neighboring" five countries of tiny islands stretching from Jamaica in the Caribbean to Barbados. All at 2.0 and under. Barbados had the lowest rate at 0.4 per 100 K, not even half a person as statistics go. It is followed in ascending order by Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Grenada and Jamaica. These are tiny places who see wealth paraded in front of their faces everyday of the tourist season, from the richest to upper middle class from everywhere else - all temporary resident/vacationers. Aptly, the still popular musical icon, "Don't Worry, Be Happy", sung by American singer Bobby McFerrin was widely recognized as having that Caribbean beat, particularly when people mistook the song as having been sung by Bob Marley - whose genre was reggae music. Bob Marley never ever had a version of "Don't Worry, Be Happy". And the original phrase was from the Indian mystic, Meher Baba, whose influence extended to the Beatles. But I digressed.
I have a personal anecdote. At one time while in oil trading, I was sent to Barbados to cover for a month a vacationing regional trader based there. Coming from a sprawling metropolis of Houston, Texas, Barbados was a postage stamp in the middle of a deep blue sea, easternmost isle of the Lesser Antilles. Go any more easterly and you will reach the west coast of Western Africa, without encountering any land mass or island in between.
My wife had a chance to join me for a week of that temporary assignment. We were not tourists technically but we did enjoy the amenities of the tourist experience. It was an eye opener in more ways than one. Like all the islands in that region, tourism was invariably the major, if not the only, industry. Almost everything had to be brought in - from construction material to tomatoes, orange juice and milk to toilet paper, etc. But the island's airport could handle big jets, including the then once much vaunted supersonic Concorde. Barbados was once a British colony so there was a tourist pipeline of direct non-stop flights from the UK.
Amazingly, then as today, as currency exchanges go, one U.S. dollar will only get you two "Badian" dollars. A very strong BBD vs. USD exchange rate for a country that does not have anything to export, but imports practically everything. It was explained to me then and I'm sure it is still true today. Their government does not and will not spend money they do not already have for any project. No matter how enticing an infrastructure or social project, they will not borrow money to fund it. If I remember correctly, it was in their constitution. I am not sure but what a concept!
On my last day I had a conversation with the driver who took me to the airport. He told me that in all of 47 years since his birth he had never left the island, not even once. I asked if he had plans to one day do it or was he even curious to find out or see what it was like even in just the other parts of their hemisphere. His reply surprised me. In Badian fashion he said, "No, none at all". TV told him as much. He had no desire to adjust what he needed nor increase his desire to want anything more than what he already had. He did not care to let what some people want become his needs. He had what he needed and that was good enough, he said conclusively. As simple as his message was, it actually said a lot.
Aspirations from any of us fall into just two main categories - the column on the left is where we list what we need and the one on the right is where we enumerate the stuff we want. The problem arises the moment we blur the line that separates the two. When the list in the want column starts migrating to the need column we upset the balance almost immediately. It seems then that each of us has a more-than-fair amount of control over our personal happiness by merely keeping the balance between "needs and wants" at the level we are comfortable with. And it would be different for every individual.
That is why children in general and people from the poorest regions of the world have something in common. They have fewer needs and they know little about what so much more to want.
"Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy".
----- Logan Pearsall Smith
And I must say that, " The state of Happiness is at its greatest maximum when worry is kept to a minimum".
Let's end with this:
Anticipated Joy is the greatest of all joys. Children and the poor have copious amounts of them while those with everything, such as the rich, have the least.
That will be a good topic to muse on my next blog. What is anticipated joy?
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