Thoughts on Happiness

by B.J. Stolbov

Living in a foreign country is an opportunity to learn about a different culture, a different way of seeing and responding to the world.  It provides an opportunity to immerse yourself in new customs and traditions, and to see what really matters and is important to people around the world. It is also an opportunity to examine, from a distance, your own customs and traditions and, most important, your own cultural assumptions.

I was born and raised and lived in the United States all my life, until I was almost 60 years old. Then, I joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to the Philippines, to Quirino Province in northern Luzon, to the municipality of Cabarroguis, to the barangay (barrio) of Zamora. There, I learned some things from Filipinos about happiness.

Eyes of curiosity, Luzon, Philippines. Photo by Daniel Peckham via Flickr CCL

Before I start telling you about my discoveries, I need to offer this disclaimer. What follows is full of generalizations. For the sake of brevity and for effect, I have purposely taken out all the “sometimes,” “occasionallys,” and “almosts.” You can add them and I won’t mind – almost. 

I believe that truth is circular, actually spherical, like the world. You can turn truth around, and even upside down, and still find some truths in it.  When I moved to the other side of the world, the truths that I was raised with, that I had always held dear, that I thought were the only possible truths, were turned around, especially what I learned in the last three years about happiness and success.

In the U.S., success is happiness. If you have money, a good job, a solid place to live, a car, a computer, a television, or a big-screen television, the latest electronic equipment, and a full-funded retirement account, you are successful. You can be happy, proud of yourself, of what you’ve accomplished, and of the things you own.

In the Philippines, it’s another way around.  Happiness is success. If you have good health, a good family, parents, spouse, children, relatives, trusted friends, supportive neighbors, pleasant companions at work, a community of people who like you and whom you like, you are successful. Happiness is who you are and with whom you are. Happiness isn’t something that you will get only in the future; and happiness isn’t dependent upon what you do for a living or what you own.

Happiness isn’t something you get after you get everything else; happiness is something you have before your get everything else.

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All That Money Can Buy?

story and photos by Paul Ross 

I suppose that, like most people, topping my “What if..?” fantasy list is the question, “What if I had a lot of money?”–So much money, that not only would I not have to worry about it, I would never even have to think about what I spent. What would I do with those kinds of assets? Support charities? Fund politicians? Gamble (and I include the stock market)? Or just buy a lot of stuff? And what form might the purchasing take? I already travel, so-- Cars? Clothes? Jewelry? Boats and planes? Art? 

$9500 bottle of wine.

In this last category, I had a chance to see what that indulgence might look like at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in the Laurel Highlands region of Pennsylvania. Grillionaire Joseph A. Hardy made megabucks through 84 Lumber, his building supply chain store. I didn’t meet the man but, from what I heard, what I saw in images of him scattered throughout the expansive property and the nature of the complex itself, I got an impression: big, brash, determined, impulsive, self-motivated, assured beyond surety, independent and generous; in short, a real American. Let me paint the picture for you from what I experienced. See if you get the same mental image.

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What If We Didn't Go Home?

by Ellen Barone

“So, when exactly are you coming home?” my father asked.

“I don’t know, Dad. Our visas allow us to stay in Peru for at least three months, then we’re thinking of heading on to Argentina and Chile...”

The broken and sputtering magicJack connection at the South American Explorers Club in Cusco broadcasted about every third word of our conversation, but the message that traveled down the steep stone streets of the ancient Inca capital and across the continents to the lush green lawns of Newark, Delaware, the college town I’d grown up in and where my parents still live, was crystal clear: We weren’t coming “home”. 

Plaza de Armas at night, Cusco, Peru. 

The truth was, my husband, Hank, and I had no idea when, or if, we were going home. We didn’t even know what “home” meant anymore. We’d been winging it, temporarily inhabiting Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru: itinerant and loose in the world in a manner that both worried and intrigued family and friends back home.

We were four thousand miles from our homeland, eleven thousand feet above sea level, south of the Equator where summer is winter, and living in a fourth-floor walkup without heat. Yet, life felt sweet and rich and fortunate. 

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Have a Happy Crappy Christmas Catalonia-Style

by Elyn Aviva

Bon Nadal and Feliç Any Nou! That’s Catalan for Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

It’s the holiday season in my home town, Girona, Catalonia, and things aren’t quite what you might expect. Yes, there are the familiar ho-ho-ho Santa Claus figures dangling from buildings, and three-foot-high Christmas trees with matching pink and purple ribbon decorations are lined up outside stores on the main shopping streets.

There are brilliant-colored lights strung across the avenues, and a glittering conical abstraction of a Christmas tree pulses on and off in the Plaza de Catalunya. Christmas carols (sometimes in English) echo through the halls, the beauty salons, and the restaurants, and carolers emote as they stroll down the pedestrian Rambla, songbooks in hand. Flame-red poinsettias are for sale in the market, and school-club fundraisers hawk chocolate bars and handmade knickknacks. And there’s the cheery Firanadal (Christmas Fair) offering artisanal goods, felt slippers, jewelry, plastic toys, and boxwood spoons.

Yes, all of this is vaguely familiar, even if gigantes (giant dancing king and queen figures), a marathon Nativity play (Els Pastorets), xuixus (pronounced “choochoos”: sugar dusted, cream-filled pastry rolls), and turrón (a kind of nougat) aren’t usual Christmas fare.

But you really know you’re in a foreign land when you seen the rows of squatting miniature figures—including SpongeBob SquarePants, flamenco dancers, Obama, Barça soccer star Messi, Queen Elizabeth II, and Death—their pants pulled down, a brown plop of poop deposited behind them, for sale for inclusion in Nativity scenes. Correction: the plop of poop behind Death is white, not brown. 

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Searching for Happiness with a child in Copenhagen

by Jenny McBain

Perhaps my nine-year-old son has the makings of a therapist.  A Scottish friend was hosting us in his deluxe apartment in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile the ancient street which wends its way from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace.   In addition to owning a number of desirable properties, my friend is in possession of a title and sports a   "Sir" in front of his name; but wealth did not buy him happiness feeling distinctly discontent when he sought my son’s council.  

“Ruairidh (Roory), what would you do if you were sixty years old and you had no wife, no children and no job that you really enjoyed?” he asked him.

Without missing a beat, Ruairidh framed his reply with the innocent wisdom that is peculiar to the very young.  “I would try to be like a child, to be happy”, he said.  

But are the majority of  kids really happy? 

Measuring happiness is a tricky business; you may as well try to catch a butterfly with a hula-hoop.   Yet happiness and well-being are being touted as a new currency to be assessed and scored in international league tables alongside Gross Domestic Product.   According to UNICEF’s evaluations, the Scandinavians and the Dutch lead the pack when it comes to the nurturing of their young. And we in the UK and the U.S. are languishing somewhere at the bottom of the third division.  So I set out on a vacation with a mission:  I wanted to find out why the Danes- and their children- are so darned happy. 

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Traveling the Side Roads

by Barbara Benjamin

People travel for many reasons: to get away from the routines of daily life; to face a new challenge, to see new sights, or just to kick back and relax. I travel to experience new cultures, to come away knowing what it is like, day by day,  to live in a place I’ve never lived in before. So, when I travel, I always travel on the side roads.  Rather than booking accommodations at a travel agent’s favorite resort or hotel, I often land in another country I’m visiting without reservations, and, speaking to the airport cab driver or questioning some locals I meet on the road, I find out where I can rent a house.  Occasionally, I am able to find a house far away from the tourist areas  that is advertised in my hometown newspaper or on the Internet, and I can book in advance.   

Once I find my temporary new home, whether a cottage in the tropics of Jamaica, West Indies, or North Wales or a pre-Revolutionary farmhouse in Downeast, Maine,  I begin my adventure of setting up my new household, shopping in the local markets, cooking the local meals, conversing with the local people, and attending the local church.  Mingling with my new neighbors in this way, I often make friends and have the good fortune to be invited into their homes for lunch or afternoon tea.  That’s when I really learn what it would be like to live in the place I’m visiting, as my new friends enthusiastically share stories about their lives, all the latest town gossip,  and their secret recipes for national dishes. I should explain that, whenever possible, one of my first purchases is always a local cookbook, and I often learn more remarkable information about the people I am living among from their cookbooks than from all the history and guidebooks available.  

Traveling this way, I always have a  chance to observe the demographics of the culture, the rhythms and mores of  diverse people in the region I’m visiting, and, unfortunately, the inescapable and ever-present antagonism that exists between different groups of people within a single culture and between cultures.  No matter how majestic and serene the snow-capped peaks or how deep and placid the waters that mark the landscape, there is always an underlying tension between the diverse groups of people who live there.  Like the tension created by the tectonic plates that rub against or move away from each other under the earth’s surface, the people in every culture rub against each other and move away from each other,  often leading to violent social eruptions. 

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