276/365 (Oct 3, 2011) – Happiness is a strange thing. It’s fluid in nature, sometimes fleeting, and it’s difficult to define. I think it’s a state of mind, finding contentment and balance in all things. A balance between the “wants” and the “needs”. Our society is so darned focused on wants though, that we fail to see how many people don’t have what they need.
When I was in South America a few years ago I looked around at the amazing gap between those that had money and those that didn’t. I saw people on the river living in floating shacks, many children without shoes. Their water source was parasite infested, they didn’t have access to funded medical care, they didn’t have a supermarket or a convenience store nearby. Their mode of transport was a battered old canoe. I saw serious poverty. And I saw happiness there too. The river gave them protein, the jungle provided fruits and vegetables and wood for walls and palm fronds for roofing material. They had food, they had water, they had shelter. Their basic needs were met, their diet was healthy – although their water supply was frightening by our standards – and they were happy.
Here in North America we are so spoiled. We are a society that thrives on materialism and acquisition. Strangely, when I look at people who have more than they need, all I see are people who are unhappy because they want more! It seems that the more we have, the less we appreciate it, and the more we think we need to make life happier. In an earlier post I said fussy people annoy me, people who can’t make a choice drive me nuts because I just don’t get it, I suppose it has something to do with being afraid to make the wrong choice, but wrong choices – or perhaps poor choices is a better phrase – just provide you with some important data on what didn’t work, it reduces the risk for poor choice the next time around. Our parents generation may have had things tougher than we did, they didn’t have as many choices and we tend to equate choice with a better life.
But is it true?
I feel for today’s youth, their choices are enormous, and when faced with too many choices some people opt for none of them. There is that fear of “what if I make the wrong choice?” A few years ago I was involved in a program mentoring young girls (grades 10-11) in small communities where the female community role models in sciences were pretty limited. For several years, each year, I’d take on a girl and correspond with her as she explored the vast variety of options out there. The pressure they were under to make those choices so early. One girl told me that her counsellor was all over her to make a choice on her career path and if she didn’t figure it out NOW! that she would lose her opportunities. She was only in grade ten! How is a girl at age 15 supposed to have a clue what she wants to do for the rest of her life when she lives in a small, rural, community and has no idea what opportunities are out there?
And yet, as much as society says today’s youth is worse than the previous ones for wanting more and being disinclined to work to get it, I also think that this generation coming into their own is a more giving generation. They have grown up with community service and volunteering as a component of their education and it is more natural for them. I know a young man who recently organized a charity event with a friend of his. They solicited images from photographers and held a silent auction to raise funds for cancer. It was a fabulous event, he raised more than he’d hoped, and it changed my mind completely on today’s 20-somethings. Seriously, at 21, organizing a volunteer charity event was the last thing on my mind! At 21 I was like most kids my age – focused on fashion, partying, and thinking about how to get what I wanted in life.
I’m impressed and hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we can turn a corner and find a way to help people who don’t have the means to get what they need, let alone what they want. It’s funny, I wrote that on someone’s Wall recently, that what I want is for hungry people to have food, for homeless people to have shelter, that what I want out of life is to see more people give more to meaningful charities so that the people who don’t have the means to get what they want, at least get what they need. A few days later I visited that space and my message was gone. That makes me sad, I thought it was a good wish since it truly is what I want.
The Toy Ride yesterday was great and as Fall rolls in I always start thinking about the charities that we support and how we can give more. We support a lot of different groups each year – Doctors Without Borders, Plan Canada, World Vision, The Brain Tumour Foundation, The Canadian Cancer Society, The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau, The United Way, Raise a Reader, Backpacks for Kids, The SPCA, The Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited, Critter Care, Wildlife Rescue, The Small Animal Rescue Society – and it feels good to give. Several years ago we switched to gifts of charity instead of material gifts within our families. We also put in literally hundreds of hours each year volunteering for the Canadian Power & Sail Squadrons. Helping makes me happy, I have what I need, and we have the means to get and do what we want. We don’t have children to support and see through school, so now what I want is to try and help others get what they need, and maybe some of the things that they want.
Anyway, that’s just what has been rattling around inside my brain for the past few days.
When I got home I remembered two videos on Ted that I’d seen a few years ago and went hunting for them. One is about how more choice doesn’t equate to greater happiness, the other challenges the belief that if we don’t get what we want we can’t be happy.
Maybe you’ll find them interesting too.
6 comments
This photo makes me happy. 🙂
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