Beautiful World through your Happy Eyes

© Victoria Evangelina Belyavskaya

21.11.2008

“The beauty and mystery of this world

only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion;
if you want to live in that paradise
where happy mares and stallions live,
open your eyes wide and actually see this world
by attending to its colors, details and irony.”

Orhan Pamuk
My Name Is Red

“Just another proof that you live an extraordinary life,” people tell me after the
publication of the last column, “A Week in Cookies,” where I described the seven
flavors of one of my recent weeks. Two days ago, re-reading the article in a “low
spin” of my mood, I once again confirmed to myself that there was nothing unusual
happening that week. Was it a wonderful one? “AbSOULutely,” as a friend says. I
fully enjoyed the abilities of my mind and soul to be open and welcoming to new experiences;
their willingness to share feelings and their enjoyment drawn from the simple beauty of every
moment and creation of this world. All human beings are abundantly blessed with these qualities,
but a few have never discovered them, and many others use them rarely, perhaps living in a false
awareness of the scarcity of the blessing’s resources.

The last category seems to need a “validation” of an especially gorgeous sunset, baby’s first steps
or a new car for using some emotions from their “pool of joy.” It looks like, over the years the
price of happiness and acknowledgement of beauty rises: the youngest babies dwell on
themselves, nourished by the happiness from within, but under the loving “guidance” of relatives
quickly learn to expect happiness from outside and depend on something that will make them
content. At first, it is a candy, a little toy, a bigger toy, an i-pod, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a car…
and the never-ending quest goes on and on until the material chakras are satisfied with the energy
received, and a person, if wise enough, is ready to move to the level of spiritual development.
But such transformation rarely happens with an absence of the conscious quest for higher
knowledge.

To achieve happiness, you can either try to change the world to fit your desires or to accept what
is, closing the gap of conditioning to start living joy. The latter decision seems to be ever so wise
due to the acknowledged psychological fact that people often do not know what they want. As
Socrates put it, “The person does not reach happiness, not because he does not want it, but
because he does not know in what it consists."

Despite having long lists of our likes and dislikes, we are uncomfortable predicting our future,
and often are mistaken in our efforts. We live in a spin of “miswanting,” desiring something that
one erroneously believes will make one happy, a term coined by D. T. Gilbert and T. D. Wilson.
Through a number of experiments, they proved that what people think they want is often not
really what they want at all. Like how a new car, though exciting in the beginning, soon
incorporates in the background of one’s life and becomes ordinary, causing none of the initial
happiness. Brainwashing by the advertising industry also prevents us from knowing our own
mind, creating desires for various objects, destined to make us happy.

“According to the data, once people reach a threshold of about $10,000 a year per person, money
has little to do with contentment. People are happy if they are optimistic, grateful and forgiving.
If you only think about your disappointments and unsatisfied wants, you may be prone to
unhappiness. If you're fully aware of your disappointments but at the same time thankful for the
good that has happened and for your chance to live, you may show higher indices of well-being,"
writes John Leland in the article "Happiness Math," published in February 2004 in The New
York Times.

Back to Socrates: “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what
he would like to have.”

Positive psychological studies confirm that happiness is not a chase of whatever you think you
need to achieve bliss, but finding satisfaction and contentment in ourselves and the world around
as it is, achieving inner peace through the use of religion, meditation, and time with nature.

Psychologists state that 50% of our happiness is genetically pre-determined. 10% more depends
on our life circumstances. And it is only the last 40% that we have control over. K. M. Sheldon
and S. Lyubomirsky see participating in “intentional activities” as the best way to move our
happiness level up. Just as a Chinese proverb goes: “If you want happiness for an hour -- take a
nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get
married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime
-- help someone else.”

Among other everyday sources of happiness is gratitude. “If you want a strategy to increase your
happiness, there's a lot out there that will help. You can take pharmaceuticals like Prozac. But
gratitude is something that doesn't have side effects," said Robert Emmons, a psychology
professor at the University of California at Davis who, with McCullough, conducted the most
widely cited study on gratitude.

On the first place among the everyday activities to achieve happiness the psychologists put
visualizing your best possible self, i.e. imagining your life in the perfect probable future where
you have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself and writing all this
imaginable script of your best possible future down. With age, people gain self knowledge and
become more cautious, or better to say, aware that the future holds but certainties. Some find it
pessimistic, locking the gates to the pool of joy and following one of Schopenhauer's advices:
live with extremely low expectations, protecting yourself from the inevitable damage other
people will cause you.

Others realize the beauty of living in the now, the wisdom of understanding that due to
miswanting, best guesses beat careful planning, and that it is the most wise to “make your best
guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it,” as Jeremy Dean writes on his
PsyBlog.

An extraordinary life of joy is for everyone. Open up your heart, allow yourself to enjoy the
flavors of the day and sit on the shore of the pool of joy, knowing that the best things in life are
free. Wherever you see laughter, friendship, loyalty and love, there is your treasure. This ability
to see beauty and amazement of the world comes from within, and guided by your knowing soul,
you can open up the road to the blessing of seeing the beautiful world through the happy eyes of
those who share this life’s journey with you.