J’ai rencontré Harry à la Fnac. J’étais caissière. En fait on m’a surtout parlé de lui. Il est formidable avec les enfants! Il fait le bonheur des mamans ! Harry les séduit tous et toutes!
« Je n’ai jamais pu faire lire mon fils, mais avec Harry il est devenu vorace »
JK Rowling est pour moi cette magicienne qui a fait défilé des codes barres sous ma douchette et réconcilié des milliers avec la lecture.
Aujourd’hui connue mondialement, Joanne de son prénom nous confie quelques clés du bonheur : l’échec et l’imagination.
L’échec
J’ai longtemps hésité avant de publier, un peu en sourdine, certains articles de ce blog. J’y parle de mes difficultés, mes échecs. J’ai choisi de les publier car je les considère comme des apprentissages et que l’erreur n’est pas de les vivre mais de les ignorer.
JKR parle de ses échecs comme de son meilleur diplôme parce que ça l’a obligée à se débarrasser du superflu.Une réussite ailleurs aurait sûrement laissé Harry sur le quai.
Elle dit :
“Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist list of acquisition and achievement… life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitude “
« le bonheur est dans le fait de savoir que la vie n’est pas une liste d’acquisitions et de performances… la vie est difficile et compliquée et au delà du contrôle de qui que ce soit et l’humilité de savoir ça vous permettra de vivre ses vicissitudes. »
L’imagination
Joanne aborde ensuite l’imagination oul’empathie. Fermé son esprit et son imagination à ce que l’autre vie est se vouer au cauchemar.Elle nous appelle à regarder, utiliser notre empathie et agir. Elle cite Plutarque “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” « Ce que nous réalisons intérieurement va changer la réalité extérieure »
Comme j’avais déjà été portée par le discours de Steve Jobs à Stanford en 2005, je remercie JKR pour cette fabuleuse émotion. Une émotion et un partage que je souhaite de tout mon cœur favoriser le 5 juin à Paris lors de Bliss les explorateurs du bonheur.
Joanne conclue avec une citation de Sénèque et ce sera donc aussi ma conclusion:
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
« La vie est tel un conte: ce qui importe n’est pas sa longueur mais si elle est bonne »
When I was younger, I studied Economics at the University. I had to use esoteric terms, complicated theories, hypothesis “all things being equal”, going from micro to macro… I felt I had to understand a monster created by us but not for us.
We have to feed the giant to maybe have a chance to see him do what we want him to do. The pulse of the beast: the GDP. But didn’t we develop all those tools to have a better life? Is it working? What’s the point of all that if human wellbeing is not in the center of our economics?
A small but famous country, Bhutan, is showing us a new way. Bhutan is Famous for it’s measurement of gross national happiness instead of GDP. But measuring happiness is a first step and doesn’t mean that the country is the country of happiness. A wave of suicide has been reported as a consequence of modernization and weaker family links.
Let me introduce you to my friend Gilles who is passionate about emotions and founded an emotion based city guide: Sencities. He is working with specialists in the field of emotions and introduced me to Florent from the Lab LUTIN (Imp in French). They pluged me on a machine that took several data like my heartbeat, my eyes movements and my breathing. The lab is studying and measuring our emotions for industrial purpose, in this lab it’s specifically for the videogame industry but we can easely imagine that it could be used to measure happiness eventhough for the moment they can’t make the difference between anger and happiness for example.
I tried an other machine/gadget/tool that claims it can raise your happiness level: hearthmath. It helps you monitor your emotions and through exercices coordinate your brain and your heart. It’s called coherence.
Technology is trying to measure happiness but on a world level it seems that happiness became a hot subject. Even the very famous social network Facebook launched an analysis of our happiness level using keywords in users status. Learn more about it with this article or this video.
But in the end do we need so many criterias to measure happiness?
In Hypertension and Happiness across Nations , David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald measured blood-pressure of 15,000 randomly sampled individuals from 16 countries. They compared well-being with high blood pressure and found evidence that suggests that happier nations report fewer blood-pressure problems. It matched happiness measurements that were made with a simple scale of subjective happiness.
This other study “examined the accuracy of measuring happiness by a single item (Do you feel happy in general?) answered on an 11-point scale (0-10). Its temporal stability was 0.86. The correlations between the single item and both the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Hills & Argyle, 1998) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Pavot & Diener, 1993) were highly significant and positive, denoting good concurrent validity. Moreover, the single item had a good convergent validity because it was highly and positively correlated with optimism, hope, self-esteem, positive affect, extraversion, and self-ratings of both physical and mental health. Furthermore, the divergent validity of the single item has been adequately demonstrated through its significant and negative correlations with anxiety, pessimism, negative affect, and insomnia. It was concluded that measuring happiness by a single item is reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys as well as in cross-cultural comparisons.”
We can continue measuring cold data like money but I believe that there is space to use happiness as a legitimate indicator and driver for our society. Who’s in?
Astounding. I have a blog about happiness trying to conceptualise it and now I say there is no recipe.
It’s true. For me. Everything I write on this blog is my path on happiness. Those are the steps I made to understand my truth. I guess there are as many ways to reach happiness as there are individuals.
So yes you can try to squeeze happiness in a book or an application but true happiness is boundless and there could be as many books as people. My happiness is what you may sense in this blog through words. But It’s a every moment appreciation.
Happiness is a cursor. Happiness leads you to your true self.
True self could sound mystic but let’s take out the glitter. True self is for me when my thoughts, my emotions, my acts, my heart are in sync.
Happiness opens the doors of compassion, love, excitement, peace.
It’s the flow of coincidences, the smile, the quick steps on the pavements. Happiness is confidence, the eye quick to catch. Happiness floats around you, generous.
Sure now I can look back and see the books, the people, the events that touched me but take those same books, people, events and throw them at me in a different timing and I would have heard nothing.
There is no recipe to happiness. There is a questioning and a listening to the answer that can come in any shape like a dialogue with yourself.
Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Danzig, Poland. He had a pessimistic personality. He said for example: ““Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom”
Arthur was not a happy fellow so what a surprise to find after his death, in his personal notes, a manuscript in the writings entitled “Die Kunst, glücklich zu sein” which could be translated as the art of being happy. I couldn’t find any trace of it in English bibliographies. Schopenhauer says that we can’t be happy but at least we can follow rules to avoid pain. He lists 50 rules. The first rule is not to aim for an unachievable happiness but to manage your life as well as you can by avoiding unnecessary suffering for you and others.
The second rule is to avoid jealousy by comparing with others (hum that sounds like positive psychology)
The third rule is to not drift from your natural tendencies. Some are creative others contemplative. Don’t go against your nature
An Other rule is to be self-sufficient: “Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure, are by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.”
In his essay “on the wisdom of life” from Schopenhauer final work, “Parerga und Paralipomena” (1851), Arthur sees health as the most important factor of happiness that can’t be traded for honors.
“For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care. There can be no competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one side, and honor, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions of our personal life,—health, temperament, capacity, income, wife, children, friends, home, are a hundred times more important for our happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise we shall be miserable.”
“It is the possession of a great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is worth having, and conducive to happiness”
Schopenhauer has been influenced by Buddhism and believed in the limitation of your desire to lower suffering. Life was for him a painful road and his (limited) happiness rested in avoiding, reducing, coping. None the less, his rules are good guidelines to live a happy life.
I leave you with a sample of a six part series on philosophypresented by philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers and their ideas about the pursuit of happiness. This episode is about Schopenhauer.
Click on the painting to discover the artist Bob Row and his gallery of portraits
Tonight, I am alone in Spain. I feel lost. A dear friend touched a very ancient wound. I thought it was a cleared matter, a souvenir. But set the décor, rerun the script and bad memories come haunting you. You are only a nutshell on a furious ocean.
Where is happiness in those moments?
How can someone who is writing about happiness and living it everyday can make such a deep dip?I feel like a frog with my swollen eyes. Coldplay is signing melancholic songs for me, only for me. Far from everybody, I am a lonely soul. So where is happiness when my heart feels it has been left on the side of the road?
“If you ever feel neglected
If you think that all is lost
I’ll be counting up my demons”
It’s not the first time that the same demons come knocking so what is the way to go?
First, there was rage. It took over me. I was screaming, walking all over. I could have broken everything in the flat. Rage, what a curious emotion. Rage like a feeling ofomnipotence. Rage, taking back the control over matter when you are totally losing it.
Second, there was self-pity. Why, why, why me?
Third, there was the need to run away. Fourth, fifth… just because the situation, the people touched a painful spot. I thought all this was far behind. What a surprise!
That’s where happiness lies: the truth. Oh yes, I wish I could be way ahead on the road but I still have some undone business to take care of. I have no clue on how to get this past me but I know that if I don’t change my methods of coping, it will rise again. It’s with a swollen heart that I wish I will get to a place of peace to talk to my friend. I know that in these moments you can be quickly overtaken by that suffering voice.
I can’t hide or avoid. There are places, moments in this life that make me question the foundations of my happiness. It seems so clear and easy and suddenly concepts are shadowed by fierce emotions. But even then I can still see the shiny person within who is now coming back to the surface.
A happy life is not a life free of pain”
The next day coincidences started to knock at my door again as if life was winking at me and a new door opened. I learned a lot from that moment of despair and how your mind can focus on details to match with your internal scenario. In a world where communication is a central matter, I realize that mine shuts down in crucial moments, only to push myself in recurring stories.
I wanted to share that moment because happiness seems so obvious to me but that little shot reminded me that it will always be an ongoing process.
To my biggest surprise nothing can through me off for a long time. Deceptions, feeling of rejection, anger, sadness, loneliness, nothing seems to stick anymore.
I remember being in New York. I was alone in the penthouse apartment floaded with sunlight. I was crying. I would sit on the stairs and cry. I would stand up at the window, look at the statue of liberty and whip. I would lay down on the sofa and stare at the ceiling.
I had it all! The apartment, the car, the outfit of a life on track. I had the fun nights in Manhattans, the home cooked meals with friends, the gym, the paycheck. And still sadness was sticking.
Now I can see that I was feeding it with interpretations, internal stories, my outlook on life.
So what is the difference?
I believe mainly two things have changed:
First, like if I had developed the negative roll, I see life differently. I see all situations, bad or good as opportunities, opportunities to experience and learn. And, if there is something I enjoy in life it is learning. This shift didn’t happened in a day but really started when I said to myself “Is there an other way to experience life?” That question alone brought to me a series of encounter that changed my life and my vision.
Second. Now, I use my emotions like if they were little flashing lights on a car board. Sadness is not a companion anymore; it is merely a nice refreshing shower.
I still experience uncomfortable situations and I feel emotions rising and kicking but I know two reassuring things:
One: I have been through it before and I overcame it.
Two: if it’s too overwhelming, I can retreat and switch it off. Yes just like that. I go to my place, I sit and I am me doing the best I can. I will deal with it but I take a little time off. As soon as I am alone, I am peaceful. It’s like those white flags or like we say when we are kids: “Thumbs up” (at least here in France). When you are in a game, it means, stop. Usually you stop the game to discuss the rules.
Now when I feel a negative emotion, I know it’s a signal. What does it mean? What triggered it? Is it an interpretation, an old vision or do I have to change a way, act differently?
I still have old patterns glued to my brain but even if I don’t stress on it, I know I will tackle it when the time is right.
I can’t give a definition of happiness yet but contrasts in my life give me hints as how to describe it.
Today I went to the library to buy a book and I came back with five!
I went by the personal development section and discovered loads of books about happiness. It surprised me because I never realized there was so much literature on happiness.
You have to know that here, in France, people can be very cynical about happiness. Happiness is for fools or it’s a sect’s slogan. When you surf the web, most of the people writing, talking about happiness are Australian or American (it seems)(well I don’t speak Tamoul or Chinese).
But lately my beliefs are shaken. Everywhere I go, the topic comes up. Just this week, I was helping a friend at a festival and happiness was on everybody’s lips at conferences. Then a couple of days later, I was at a red light on my bike, and just there was a friend eating at a terrasse. I joined him for half an hour, only to discover that he was organizing happiness diners. They invite specialists on the subject like Ruut Veenhoven director of the World Database of Happiness and editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and discuss.
I was in shock. A happiness tribe!
Since there is prolific information on the web about happiness (see my blogroll for exemple), I could contribute better by investigating what French have to bring to the table. I have a few people in mind and I hope that even if France is the world champion antidepressant consumer, it has the capacity to produce great happiness thinkers. To be continued…
In the meantime, he is not talking directly about happiness but he is French and I see an evident link between how we treat our planet and the fundamentals of happiness. As I exposed in a former post, when you start to investigate the subject of happiness, more stuff (when basics needs are met) is not doing the trick. Happiness doesn’t lie in having more, wasting, war, exploitation… Once every man will discover his inner happiness, the need to destroy our environment will not be the logics anymore. Well that’s what I believe but It seems I am an utopist ☺
So don’t miss this sublime movie that has been released for free in several languages for us to team up and improve the life of each one of us.
