HAPPINESS

Prof. Lubomir Stoykov

We, the Bulgarians, have the unparalleled fate of being at the back of the queue of research charts for the happiest nations. In a study of Columbia University - and more specifically its Earth Institute, Bulgaria is 147th out of a total of 156 countries (shockingly at the bottom!), with such poor countries as Angola, Bangladesh and Bolivia close to us in the chart. The average Bulgarian is not happy and the reasons for this are many - social, political, economic and psychological. The latter also comes down to the fact that the very idea of happiness in a number of cases is distorted and bent - the materialisation is absolutized and the spirituality is eliminated.

But not only that. Thought and attitude of happiness hang in the clouds and usually have nothing to do with real life, however simple and ugly they are. A man pursues happiness all his life, but often times it turns out that he is bitterly lying to himself - he pays a tax of overbidding, empty vanity, or the most banal life momentum (everyone does it, so I must also do it). Happiness is perhaps such a concentrate of joy, delight, cheerfulness and satisfaction that makes our existence complete. Happy are those moments in which human experiences are loaded with the highest degree of wisdom, beauty, good, and truth. Happy are those moments in which human experiences are saturated with wonderful emotions and unparalleled feelings of satisfaction. In this sense, happiness is the highest threshold, the limit of human pleasure, the kind of supremacy of joyful feelings. For some happiness is the only meaning of human life; for others it is an illusion and a chimera, and that is why it is unattainable; for a third it is not possible if it is not shared with people, which means that the selfish person can never be truly happy. There are also few who think that happiness does not exist or that it is too dangerous and even harmful. Especially when it comes at the cost of many sacrifices, atrocities and evils. Is Gustave Flaubert right or too extreme when he claims that the pursuit of happiness leads to the greatest troubles of the world? ...

Different things make different people happy. However there is an universal criteria such as freedom, democracy, civil peace (in social terms) and health, love, spiritual and material well-being, psychological peace, achieved goals, dreams come true, etc. (in an individual plan) that are commonplace. Their absence simply cannot be compensated except through illusions and paranoid states.

Many believe that achieving the set goals alone ensures happiness. But isn’t it something else? - happiness is not only to fulfil your desires and to get what you aspire to, but also after you have achieved it - to continue to want it, to keep on enjoying it. It does not take much to make a person happy. Especially if he is open-minded. Especially if he is free and can independently make a choice. Especially if he has the senses to discover and enjoy the smallest things in life. Especially if he is used not only to take, but also to give - from heart and with heart...

Read: 5181 times                                                  © Fashion Lifestyle Magazine, issue 97, August 2018