The art of being happy

I was happy today because my wallet that was stolen this morning only contained €50, a bank card and a health insurance card. Yesterday I’d taken my credit card, my drivers licence, my Dutch museum card and my train card out.

I was happy to discover that on weekends the atmospheric Chatelet bar where on rare occasions I drink cheap cocktails serve a brunch buffet with yummie things the whole afternoon for only € 10,- and I could sit there and read and write and listen to music and eat and see the people walk through the Gracia streets.

I was happy to find the fruit trees in Park Güell blooming and the rocky part at the far end of the park, where there is a beautiful view of the city, almost completely empty.

I was happy to find a pile of books next to a garbage container. I wasn’t sure if I needed Schopenhauer’s “El arte de ser feliz”, The art of being happy (with the original German version published in the end of the book) but I took it anyway.

Back in the gallery, while eating some of the desert I had smuggled out of Chatelet and cooking artichokes, I read the first pages anyway.

We live, thought Schopenhauer, in the worst of all possible worlds, constantly on the brink of destruction. Our will, or our desires, are continually demanding things from the world that cannot always be satisfied. And so we are continually frustrated.
Even when our desires are satisfied it will only be brief. This satisfaction will then lead to an increase in our desires and, ultimately, to boredom when our desires are finally exhausted.
Life, then, is suffering (an idea well-known to Buddhists). The answer for Schopenhauer was not to seek happiness, but to try and get through life with the minimum of suffering. His goal was for a bearable life.

The text is divided in two parts, rules for our relationship with ourselves and rules for our relationships with others

He sees human happiness as being present or presented in four ways:

1. a happy temperament or spirit

2. a healthy body

3. a calm mind

4. external things (of little importance compared to the other 3)

He quotes Sophocles: “wisdom is the most important part of happiness” and ““the happiest life is to be without thought”.

I eat my artichokes with a garlic dressing and make myself some green tea in the green cup I use every day and never really look at. I do now. It has words on it. In the center there’s the word Sophocles values highly. He writes this in “Oedipus at Colonus”, the play describing the end of Oedipus’ tragic life:

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.”

I drink my tea and rethink the day. It wasn’t a happy one. It was a tough one. I was struggling to reach Schopenhauer’s number three, a calm mind. But there were islands of happiness. And there was love. It was everywhere. I knew. And even though I didn’t see it and I didn’t feel it in every step I took, knowing it made me happy.