jueves, 24 de julio de 2008

Breaking the shell

So I decided to be happy. Not to pretend to be happy in front of others, or happy as the western society says you should, but really happy. How should I start then?
How to be happy? money? friends? love? family? god? Let´s see how I understand happiness now. Looks like a two step program: Make yourself happy inside and follow what you desire.

Happiness based on money, as most of us know it, seems temporary, false and only works as a comparative with others. We want things that others have, and when we get them, we are happy. But then, someone gets a newer, faster, more expensive things, so we are unhappy again until we get them. Besides with one exception, there will always be richer people than you, so you´ll never be completely happy if you compare, and surely you´ll always want more. An as I told in a previous post, we own nothing, so a fortune can disappear in seconds, and so would you happiness.
To support happiness in others is a risk too. Friends, a special person, family, they all have their own life and pretty sure you are not the center of it. If you base your life in others, you´ll depend on their time, resources, availability and mood. You can not manipulate people to make you happy. If we have the ability to get happy by ourselves, why beg someone to help us with our happiness? You should be happy, and then share it with others.
God? well, I don´t know the foundations of every religion, but I see a lot of believers not very happy with their lives. I suppose it helps, but there´s something missing.

Fortunately in a given moment, a great book got to my hands. If I had received the book before, maybe I wouldn´t have paid a lot of attention to it, but in that search It was the first sign I was looking for.
After reading it, I concluded that the best way to look for happiness is deciding to, as it does not depend on external factors but only from the inside. When something happens, only you decide how to take it, if it´s good or bad, and most of the time we decide for the latest.
A cliché I know, but I think everything happens for a reason. I understand this now, and I think it´s completely true. Just take as example my heart attack: on monday january 22nd, I would have thought that I didn´t deserve that, I lived fair and healthy, why me? Today I´m grateful for that health incident, as my life changed for good. That year has been the best of my life to date, my happier too.
Sometimes things happen, and appear to be bad, but we might find an explanation for those incidents later. But in the moment we react with anger or deception. If we understand that a flat tire, or heavy rain, or a lost business is for something better in the future, and we believe it, we live calmer. So if we can perceive as good everything that happens to us, nothing external will affect us. We can now only focus on living our lives, and no others lives.

Now, if you had all the money you want, or If your physician told you that you have 3 months left, what would you do? Ok, that´s the next step for happiness. Forget about accumulating and begin to live. Chose Life, as the movie said. I made myself that question and the answer was I wanted to travel to China. Why? I don´t know. It seemed like a different world, it´s eastern culture it´s more spiritual, and their values are different. It just catch my attention. So I made plans to travel and I did it. How satisfying is that?.
My life changed from a single life plan and goal, to smaller short term satisfactions.
Two years ago I had my life completely planned, today I´m just watching the next year but with concrete plans in the short term. I always have in mind that even life is lent, in 50 years or tomorrow might be gone, so I have to use it the best way I can. With this new way to see life I might say, that if I die today, I would die happy, only if I made the plans for what I wanted. It´s enough to fulfill my soul.

3 comentarios:

Anónimo dijo...

Believe me, I don't feel compassion for you, while I read through your writing I never thought...oh! poor guy!...No, I'm amazed with the sacrifice you've done. Most of the people on this planet suffer about… that ephemeral thing...yes, money, money, money, what most of us haven´t realized is that money SUCKS!!! It becomes you poorer in soul every day. When people have money, they think… I made it!! Now I can get what I want and I have a life because I can show up my MONEY!!!

It’s a very beautiful lesson for life...yes you really have learned the lesson... through a very hard experience but such is life. I remember now one true sentence:
"There aren´t impossible dreams, just the limited perception of what you can do!" …If only huge numbers of people think like you do, or at least they would be intelligent enough to recognize what life shows…everything here would be very different.
I have a question, may be I got confused but I interpreted you're completely sure you're going to die at forty?

"Pochis"

Juan Estrada dijo...

The idea of my writing isn´t compassion for my incident. I just want to show the stages I went through while changing my life perception.
ABout your question, at that time I thought I wouldn´t live after forty, but it was a very short time. Just a small crazy stage. I hope to live many years more.

Anónimo dijo...

We all hope too you live many, many years more. Good trip, good luck and I wish you to continue digging your own road. Bye, bye!

Pochis