La recherche du bonheur, chap. 1 – Pierjean Albrecht – Transform Magazine nº 3 – 3 pages en anglais

La recherche du bonheur, chap. 1 - Pierjean Albrecht - Transform Magazine nº 3

Part 1.

“Pleasure is the happiness of the foolish, happiness is the pleasure of the wise” Barbey d’Aurevilly

Nowadays this is truer than ever, but in any period, I would add that the wise don’t need happiness because they already live with joy.

The quest for happiness

In theory, everyone is looking for happiness.  In practice, very few find it. There are several reasons for this. It is a subject that has no ending.  It’s curious to think that mankind is almost at the same point as it was thousands of years ago with regard to the way in which to find and define happiness. The same questions, the same mistakes.  After so many attempts, so many different kinds of society, religion, faith, political regimes, economic systems, wars, philosophies, mankind seems to continue at the bottom rung of the ladder, or near to the bottom, to true happiness, searching in false paradises. Life is easier now than some centuries ago, people in many aspects have their freedom because they have freedom of thought, freedom to act as they wish and to get more enjoyment out of their time. But even so, the majority complain of not being happy.

There is always something that is lacking. Maybe we have to find another way to look for it, in other places, both interior and exterior. To search for happiness means isolating yourself from the world and ignoring the situation of others less fortunate than ourselves.

Because I think real individual happiness cannot exist while the happiness of all mankind does not exist. You would have to be very blind and selfish to supposedly live in happiness when a great number of your fellow beings are suffering. And in this case, those who are suffering remind the person who thinks he is happy that he cannot spend the rest of his life refusing to see them, which is what has happened throughout history, through revolutions or invasions and nowadays through terrorism. Every time the effects are the same.

Those who are unhappy, violently invade the closed, blind world of those who believe they are happy. For this reason my question is : “could happiness not be simply to try and make others happy”?  It seems so simple, so naïve, so easy, so obvious that maybe I’m mistaken.  It’s not so simple.  If this were the only solution, the ideal solution, perhaps it would have been used.  No, there’s more to it, it’s more complex, nothing is black or white in our world, but rather light grey or dark grey, but I think this is an important part of the answer.

Before dealing with this question, let’s see how people have tried to search for happiness, and in another article later on we’ll take a look at definitions of good, evil, love and hate.

This is a shame, and it is important to know the limits, but if we don’t know how to fight, others will probably end up taking advantage of us, as not everyone is such an innocent soul.

Under the chapter of helping others is also the chapter of knowing how to accept help.  I remember a nice story with a moral.  It’s about a man who has a daughter for whom he has to find a husband. She has two suitors, and to choose between them, the man decides to invite them to join him for a few days on an excursion in the mountains and that way he can study them.

During the first few days of the excursion, the man falls into a pot-hole and the first young man saves his life. The father of the girl is so thankful to be alive, that the second young man begins to worry, thinking that he won’t have an opportunity to demonstrate that he is the best choice for his daughter. They continue walking for a few more days, and the second young man has an idea. He tries to walk always close to the man and when he sees the chance, he falls into another pot-hole that is not too dangerous.

Just as he imagined, the father of the girl manages to save him from a not-so-certain death. When the excursion is over, they return to the man’s house, and the second young man is chosen.

This story shows us that, although the help given by the first young man was more important and spontaneous, because he saved the man’s life, the second young man ended up being chosen because the father felt good, his pride and ego had increased by being able to save a life.

The father doesn’t stop to think that without the first young man, he would not have been able to save the second one. He prefers his daughter to marry someone who he thinks will owe him his life for as long as he lives, instead of marrying someone to whom the man is too proud to admit that he owes his own life.

Definition of happiness :

It is important to point out that the majority of disagreements between human beings arise because what one says is not exactly the same as what the other one hears. When you talk or write, every word or subject or concept has a colour and flavour related to your life and your experiences. The person who listens or reads perceives those concepts with a different colour or flavour, resulting from the experiences of his own life. For this reason there are so many misunderstandings. Frequently, instead of standing firm and fighting to be in the right, it would be better to find out if the distance between the person talking and the person listening is due only to the words used and if, basically, they are really in agreement. Whether in terms of a couple, a social or political group, it’s important to always return to the basics.  What do we really want?  What are we sharing?  The desire to be happy.

When I write that one of the keys to happiness is surely by making others happy, I don’t mean all others, you have to set some limits, both in quantity and quality. In theory, all professions that are focussed towards helping other people bring happiness to the person who carries them out.

I have in mind those who work in the health services, such as doctors or nurses, those who save lives, such as fire- men, those who educate, such as teachers. But also in day to day life, when someone gives you a smile or thanks you, you feel better, more alive, and more at peace.

Unfortunately this totally positive attitude is difficult to keep up on a permanent basis.  It’s important to fight for it as well. There is a Latin proverb that says “Si vis pace, para bellum” – If you want peace, prepare for war.  It happens in life that we find ourselves confronted by situations of conflict from which it is difficult to emerge with only an attitude of kindness and active love.

Sometimes we need to fight and use tactics of attack or defence just to maintain our distance from others who want to take advantage of us.

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