The Art of Happiness in my world

My friend recently sent me an article from the SMH about the age that women are happy. It covered everything from what makes you happy and what it takes to be happy. It wasn’t referring to what just puts a smile on your dial, but how do you get the deeply satisfied, warm from the inside out kind of happiness that so often alludes us. Most of us spend our lives postponing happiness, I will be happy when I met my one true love, get that promotion, own my own home. And really, we all know from past experience, once we have that one thing that we think will bring us that internal glow and feeling of completeness, we are often already chasing the next thing on our to do list. And so the cycle continues, I will be happy when....

How happy are you?!?!?

I am certainly no expert in happiness, and I have had my fair share of down days, weeks and even months over the years, but I believe I have had a taste of what it means to be truly happy. I was asked last year when I made the decision to quit my job, sell my stuff and embark on an indefinite adventure around the world, “surely, you must be unhappy to leave all that behind”. And my response was, and still is, no, I was very happy, in fact intensely happy, but that is what allowed me to do it. I was comfortable and I wanted to stretch my boundaries, and to learn and experience new and different things. And that is what I am doing. I also have had the opportunity to see happiness every day, to witness some of the simplest yet most profound moments of happiness in perhaps some of the most unexpected surroundings.  The strange thing is, well perhaps it is not strange, but maybe the interesting thing is, the general rule applies, that the people with the seemingly the least, are the ones appear to have the most on the happiness scale.

I have met some really amazing people on my travels, many like minded individuals that count their blessings that they have the opportunity to travel and they see the beauty in world and the people who are part of it (Just recently, Jenn and Lynn from Australia are a perfect example)  But then for every one of those, there is the other sort of traveller, the one that complains that things don’t work like they do at home, that speaks to locals like they are second class citizens  and in general, must be incredibly unhappy as nothing is to their liking.  Leaving you to wonder, why did you even leave home?  All of us are privileged to be able to afford to travel, we are born into a society that food and shelter are a given, and that often our biggest concern can be which new Apple product to buy. Now I start to compare to most people in Nepal. Only earning enough to live week to week, fresh fruit is a rare treat and often, children can’t afford to go to school. Or in the case of the children’s home I am working with, the kids here are typically abandoned by their families, live with 200 other kids and are usually branded with the stamp “orphan = no hope”. But like anything, there is always a different view or story.

And the clean up begins

We had a clean up day at the home on the weekend, all of the 200 kids joined in and they had a ball. They laughed and joked as they scrubbed walls, de-bugged their beds and cleaned loos. And they were happy. They exuded that kind of joy that we all allusively search for. And do you know why? Because they have a home to clean, because there were people there helping them that cared, and they were excited to see the grime come from the tiles of the shower. These kids worked their little hearts out all day, they had pride in what they did and there was not one word of complaint. It is typical of all of the people I have met in Nepal, the stories of hardship and heartache are turned into stories of opportunity and possibility. And these people are happy. The smiles on their faces and the sparkle in their eye tells you so.  The Nepalese have an ability to focus on what they have rather than what they don’t. They can all tell you what they are grateful for and how lucky they are. And perhaps the key is they are not worried about what they don’t have, what they will do tomorrow, or even what happened yesterday. They are here in the moment, they are immersed in today. They are not postponing their happiness. It seems so simple. And maybe it really is.

Hard at work

So in my world, you can look at it that I am surrounded by hardship and sorrow, or you can see it as opportunity and possibility. And I am also seeing it as one of happiness.  These children are teaching me a great lesson in gratitude, in embracing hope and being here in the moment.  It wouldn’t hurt my fellow travelers that complain about the dirt, the strange toilets or the lack of power to come and spend a day in the life of a Nepali child that lives in this home, but somehow, I don’t think they would last the distance.  If you would like to know more about the organisation I am working with, you can check out their website www.mitrataa.org.