Contents
In Western culture, the idea of happiness as an indispensable value is common. But he also has a downside – the fear of failure, the fear of being left with nothing. Eastern culture offers a different approach: happiness and unhappiness are two components of a harmonious life, one is impossible without the other.
Not to find yourself, not to know your destiny, not to meet your love – these fears have been snidely defined on the Internet as “first world problems”. On the one hand, no one requires us to be the best of the best. Parents are completely ready to love us for who we are. But, on the other hand, we read success stories and think: well, why can’t we manage to keep up with everything, like this multimillionaire? Maybe there is something wrong with us?
Yes, our happiness depends primarily on us. There is no one to blame for their own laziness, negligence and indiscipline. But this does not mean that it is worth a little push – and we will get everything we want and deserve.
Children whom we have surrounded with care and attention will not necessarily grow up smart and well-mannered. And regular trips to the gym will not necessarily make our body look like the one in the picture in the magazine. And most importantly, we will not necessarily live happily ever after.
If today a white streak has come in life, tomorrow it can change to black, and there is nothing terrible in this.
The pursuit of happiness, prosperity and success can act like a drug: at some point, we begin to hate ourselves for not being able to keep up with our dreams. The more expectations, the worse the reality. There will always be something that overshadows triumph, leaves a speck of dirt on the cuff of a snow-white shirt and creeps into a diploma with a stupid typo.
But there is an alternative view that Eastern cultures offer. Psychologists Luo Liu and Robin Gilmour have found that people in China view happiness differently than they do in America. If Americans perceive life as a gradual movement towards happiness, then for the Chinese it is more of a balance between happiness and unhappiness. If today a white streak has come in our life, tomorrow it may turn into black. But there is nothing terrible in this: it means that after a while everything will be fine again.
The paradox of happiness is that we get too attached to it, do not want to let it go. The Eastern view of happiness helps to come to terms with the fact that any pleasure is imperfect and short-lived. Sooner or later he will have to let go – in order to look forward to him again.
“Happiness is not in success, but in the ability to enjoy what you do”
Elena Perova, clinical psychologist
In Eastern cultures, the attitude towards happiness is indeed more balanced. It seems to me that it is this opposition: “poise” versus “obsession” that becomes the key one.
A person brought up in Western culture is used to believing that happiness is a state that can be achieved. You just need to work, invest, and then the long-awaited “and they lived happily ever after” will come. Everyone has the right to happiness, otherwise it cannot be. For Americans, it is even guaranteed by the constitution.
A person with an Eastern mentality knows that no one guarantees him any personal happiness. Misfortune is an integral part of life, and you need to be prepared for it. Therefore, when troubles happen, the Eastern person perceives them more calmly than the Western, for whom misfortune is something that does not fit into his picture of the world.
Attitudes and expectations are one part of the question. The second, no less important, is the values that make up happiness. Positive psychology has long dispelled the myth that you can become happy by making a career and earning a lot of money. This is important, but not sufficient. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, Sonja Lubomirski and many others talk about it.
The idea that happiness is not in success as such, but in the ability to enjoy what you do, in the feeling of being included in something bigger, is repeated in many books on popular psychology. Now the most advanced part of Western society understands this.
About expert
Elena Perova — clinical psychologist, translator of the books Fundamentals of Object Relations Theory by J. and D. Scharff, Beyond the Self by Frank Summers, Psychosynthesis. Principles and Techniques” by Roberto Assagioli and “Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.