True happiness cannot be bought. Some people argue that an ancient slave could be more happy than today’s engineer. Stress could be more important to happiness than food, medicine or even freedom. For more reasing check out here, here, here, here, and here.
The curse of perfectionism
For the sake of happiness, it is not that important how much we have as long as we have more than our neighbors. Our neighbors also want to be happy. Maybe in an ancient society, they would pray and meditate, giving us an opportunity to procrastinate and rest or pursue spiritual growth. In our current society, the neighbors will be working hard and partying hard, and they will show off. To feel better with our own accomplishments, we will be motivated to work harder, ever harder, until no level of achievement can satisfy us. And hence we become perfectionists.
When I was a child, I used to be a very good student. Our grade system was between 0 and 100. A 90 is an A in America. Now my LOWEST grade was 92. Yet my parents were anything but happy. When I got 93 or 95, they would ask: “You are smart, why not 100? You do not practice enough, probably you are lazy. No more television for you. Go sit in your room and study till you get 100!”. For me even then this sounded pretty crazy. I honestly could not get 100, because I am a “big picture” guy and I always miss a couple of small details here and there. So I went to school’s psychologist and asked for advice. What she said surprised me. “You are perfect the way you are. Your parents are perfectionists. Do not ever become one.”
Perfectionism is guided by very harsh self-criticism. Whatever you do does not look sufficient, always looks flawed and needs to be fixed. The attention to details becomes an obsession, as a perfectionist tries to avoid even the smallest mistake. There is a fear of poor performance, that leads to taking ever larger tasks. At some point the tasks become unbearable and doing them becomes virtually impossible. The person feels trapped by the tasks, unable to stop doing them and unable to do anything but the tasks. Quite often perfectionists show signs of optimism, passion, and energy since they are too vulnerable to show weakness. At some point everything collapses one way or another, quite often leading to deep depression or burnout.
Pleasure vs purpose
Put very simply, happiness is a balance between pleasure and purpose. We want to feel that we have a role in the universe and we want to enjoy ourselves. In the ancient times, there were two philosophical schools, stoics vs epicureans, which had very different agendas. Stoics put purpose first, arguing for moral obligation and civil duty. Epicureans did their best to avoid politics and focused on simple life and simple pleasures. Needless to say, stoics were more successful and produced many great leaders and writers. Interestingly, many stoics experienced some symptoms of burnout and depression. There were many recorded cases of suicide of stoics.
Epicureans generally lived happy lives, full of healthy skepticism. See for example Epicurean Paradox:
Epicurus ~300 BCE is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called the “Epicurean paradox”, the “riddle of Epicurus”, or the “Epicurean trilemma”:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
The life is short, and everything changes quite quickly. See here
Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure.
Far from the epicurean ease, we find the stoics’ endurance. In some dictionaries, stoicism is defined “the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.” Paired with a greater goal, such philosophy breeds potent visionaries and leaders, but hardly happy people. Samurai Bushido code echoes stoicism: “Live when it is right to live, die only when it is right to die.”
Consumerism vs freedom
Let us compare a modern engineer with an ancient slave. A modern engineer is working most of his day when not at work he has to take care of his possessions. The wife and kids need things, the car needs to be treated. If something gets broken it needs to be fixed, and if nothing is broken it is a good time to buy a shiny new toy. Our lives are lives of great luxury, but we do not feel privileged since this luxury is pretty much universal. We have books, cars, houses. We never get to be hungry unless we choose to be on a diet. We are free to do what we want, but we cannot let go of our possessions.
Now consider a slave. He had nothing except some basic clothing. All his needs: food, drink, sex were provided by his master. Typically a slave was forced to work under the fear of hunger and physical punishment. As a result, slaves were the opposite of productive. Any time the slaves were left alone, they rested or procrastinated to minimize work. There is very little stress in being a slave: if nobody looks you do nothing, and if someone looks you do what you are ordered to do. Some slaves were educated and worked as teachers. Surrounded by the luxury of their masters, many slaves had better food and clothing than free men from poor families. And when comparing themselves to the free men, slaves quite often felt privileged.
When the people of Israel left Egypt, they wondered 40 years so that the generation of the slaves would die. This is because the slaves were happier in Egypt than the free men were in the desert. We bless our freedom quite often since it allows us to reach greatness. In theory, we could do whatever is good for us, but to which extent do we know what is good for us? In one of the best possible scenarios, we surround ourselves by possessions and become anxious that one day our luck will end and we start losing. Is this a true freedom? Old religions offered us spirituality as the way to gain freedom. Unfortunately, spirituality does not work well in today’s society obsessed with goods and technology.
Learning and awareness
Learning and awareness can substitute some aspect of spirituality, freeing us to be happy. All happiness gurus offer us to focus on experiences rather than possessions, helping less fortunate rather than dreaming of luxury.
Sometimes it is very easy to say when a person is truly unhappy. When the person is faking happiness and when the person is truly happy – not sure we can even tell.
I would love to say that unlike physical possessions, you can never lose knowledge. From my personal experience, this statement is no longer true. The world changes so quickly that if we ever stop learning our understanding will become outdated.
Why do we still want to learn and to be aware? Possibly because this gives us tools to change our lives. We can choose when we want an easy life and when we want to pursue a larger goal. Could it be, this is the definition of the true freedom in the modern world?
