Happiness

So one thing I haven’t really discussed on my blog is communication. Being here in Goma communication isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but it is quite expensive. With five bucks I can call out of the country for about 30-40 minute… I can’t really figure it out because its different every time but what else would you expect from an African telecommunications company. The funny thing is that if I call in country, but between networks (the two popular networks here are airtel and vodacom) I end up spending close to 50 cents per minute, which is more than three times what it costs for me to call out of the country. Because of the ease of communication I have actually been able to spend some time and money calling my girlfriend and family. This is actually a great thing because Internet is very difficult to find here and is so slow it is hard to do most of the stuff I want to do on it anyway.

So, getting to my real point, I was on the phone the other day with Sophia in Houston and we talked for a second about happiness. While we were talking I had so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I just wanted to get them down in writing. I have actually found this to be my new favorite past time, writing about philosophical ideas that I come across during the days.

Our conversation was centered on measuring happiness. Sophia told me that she was having a discussion with a friend that posed the question that we can measure depression, but why can we not measure happiness. First of all, I don’t really understand how you can measure depression, but I guess there is some scientific way. I believe that only the person experiencing happiness can ever measure it, but why do we need to measure it anyway?

The way I view happiness is in a completely selfish manner. My happiness is something that I feel, and I feel it in a way that no one else can feel it, nor do I want to share it. As I am the selfishly happy person I am, there is no way anyone else in the world can judge my happiness. It is in the same way that I find people trying to measure their faith or the faith of others. As a person of faith, I know that my faith is what grounds me, and that fact can never be measured or judged by anyone but myself. I look at happiness the same way I look at faith; it is a personal matter.

I think that in the discussion of happiness you will have to talk in circles around judging the measure of one’s happiness. To accept another person’s happiness is much more important than measuring it. Before I go any further let me give you my definition of happiness and Oxford’s definition (I made mine up in a way that I sound smart like a dictionary writer… why? Because that makes me happy);

My Definition	Good Ol’ Webster’s Definition
“The state of being self-satisfied and content with one’s current situation and/or experience.”	“Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.”

Looking at my definition of what I believe is happiness seems to be close to on par with what the accept definition for happiness is. Nowhere in mine or Webster’s definition of happiness is there mention of what causes happiness though. Furthermore, nowhere in the definition does it imply that there must be something in place to cause happiness except for some “feeling” or “experience”.  I think that so many people are focused on measuring the things that cause happiness and counting that as a measure of happiness.

If people look at it this way, I think that is easy to measure happiness, but I do not believe that the things, which cause happiness, are in-deed happiness. Happiness is a direct result of the causes, but happiness is never equivalent to the causes of it.

So I’m blabbering on about all this stuff that I am not sure actually even makes sense (we will see when I read over it when I’m finished), but let me make an example to see if I can get my point across. There are many things that make me happy. Sexxxy basketball shoes, good conscious rap, playing sports, jerseys, parties, traveling are among some of the many things that make me happy. If you look at these things you can see that I have all of them, so I am happy. That is not necessarily true. All of these things are material things, things that can be measured. This is why people measure these things and call it happiness, but happiness cannot be measured from this standpoint.

I have a great example from my time here in Africa. Daily I pass by a little shop on my way in to town on my bicycle. The first time I ever passed the shop was my first month in Congo, and now I stop there to talk with the guys there every day. It has become my daily routine and it is something that makes me very happy. My good friend there, Ari, is 19 years old and a refugee from Masisi. He works every day repairing motorcycles or bicycles that ride by on their way in to town. The problem is that there are about 15 stops just like his on the way in to town, so most of his days are filled by sitting around waiting for work that will not come. He has talked with me before about wanting to go to school, but he cannot make enough money to go.

Anyway we talk every day (he likes to practice his English, and me my French) and sadly everyday turns in to a discussion about money. His perception is that I am a white person with money (partially true and partially not) so I am happy, and he works hard all day with his hands, is a black man, and receives no money, so he is not happy. The thing is what he doesn’t realize is that everyday I stop by and talk with him because talking with him makes me happy. That fact is true regardless of if I am a millionaire or bankrupt. I can also see on his face as I ride my bike up every day, and he runs out from under the umbrella he is using for shade that he is happy when I come talk to him.

If you were to take our two situations from an outsider looking in you might think, that white man must be so annoyed by all these Congolese kids trying to talk to him, or wow look at that Congolese being friends and talking to that MIZUNGU! These are actually comments I get by the different people who pass as we sit there and talk. This is not the case at all. I am just as happy to be there talking with Ari as he is to have me talking to him at his shop. People would judge our happiness in the situation by the white man having everything to give the black man and the black man having nothing for that white man, so there is no way the white man can be happy. This is just not the case at all.

So I want to go back to the point that it is more important to accept another person’s happiness than to measure it. Many people today are so quick to rebut another person’s happiness. It can be out of jealousy or out of hatred, or whatever may cause one to dislike another person’s happiness, but people always want to somehow discredit another person’s happiness. The way to do this is by putting a measure on another person’s happiness. “This person is happy, but how much more happy would he be with this or that…”

In the culture of the world today it is all about material things. Look at the TV. You may be happy playing your PS2 everyday, but then you see on an advertisement for a PS3 and all of the sudden you are no longer “happy” with your PS2. This is not happiness. I think that society so badly wants to measure happiness, so that just like in any other capitalistic utopia, we can compete to see who is happiest.

Happiness is not a competition. Happiness is not meant to be determined by anyone else. Happiness is a selfish emotion that a person can only determine on their own. True happiness cannot be fabricated for the benefit of others around them. It is a feeling of being. I would encourage everyone to develop true happiness, so that they can independently fulfill their true selves because to be happy is to be one’s self.