La vida y sus desazones

Hay algo que me dijo una tía una vez:

Cuando mis hijos aún eran niños, yo y tu tío solíamos pensar “una vez que esto o aquello suceda entonces estaremos bien”. Ahora, más de dos décadas después, mirando atrás, pienso que esos momentos eran de echo los más bonitos. No sé que esperábamos. Los problemas, subidas y bajadas, siempre estarán ahí, pero muchas veces se nos olvida apreciar lo que sí hay.

Tía

Hoy, cuando veo tantos cambios sucediendo en nuestro día a día y al escuchar a varios de mis amigos adultos mayores cuando comparten su sentir al ver como poco a poco su cuerpo, su memoria, sus amigos y sus facultades dejan de estar ahí, intento recordar las palabras de mi tía.

En sus palabras leo que en la vida siempre habrá problemas, tropiezos, pérdidas, cosas que no son lo que deseabas, lo que planeabas. Que el aceptar que esto es parte de lo que te regala la vida haría esos momentos menos dolorosos y más dulces y fructíferos.

Mucho del sufrimiento en el ser humano surge cuando las expectativas difieren de lo que es, entonces, por lo menos al entender que la vida incluye desazones y que esto es algo que le pasa a todos*, al menos se evitaría el dolor que proviene de las expectativas no cumplidas. No sólo eso. Cuando sucedan, el saber que no soy sólo yo, mi error, mi infortunio o un castigo divino, nos dará mucha más confianza, fuerza y dulzura con uno mismo para sobreponernos. La vida no se trata de tener una mano con puros ases, sino más bien, qué vas haciendo conforme con lo que las cartas de la vida te van dando.

Llegaremos a tiempo (Rosana)

* mínimo nos sucederá que nuestro cuerpo envejezca en el caso de que seas afortunado y algo no te suceda antes.

On Life’s Mishaps

One of my aunts told me this once:

When my children were kids, your uncle and I used to say, “when X or Y happens, then all will be good”. Today, more than two decades after, when I look back to that moment, I see that those experiences were actually some of the most beautiful moments of my life. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Problems, ups and downs, they will always be there, but what we may forget is to appreciate the other things that we actually have.

Aunt

Today, when I see so many things changing in our day to day life and also, when I listen to several of my elderly friends share how they feel as they see how their body, memory, friends and mind slowly vanish, I try to remember my aunt’s words.

Her words tell me, life will always have problems, loss, mistakes, outcomes different from what you expected, from what you planned, from what you hoped. But, understanding that this is what being alive gifts, would make those situations less painful, more sweet and fruitful.

Much of human suffering comes when expectations are different than what actually is. Given this, if one understood that life includes mishaps, which will happen to everyone*, at least one would avoid the pain that comes from unmet expectations. Not only this, knowing that we are not the only person to whom this happens would give us more hope, understanding, self-care and strength to overcome what may. Life is not about getting a hand of five aces, instead, is about what you keep doing with the cards you keep being handed.

Llegaremos a tiempo (Rosana)

Enough. Satisfied. It’s time to change the objective.

“We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.”

Audre Lorde

We live in a time where we feel deprived: don’t earn enough, don’t sleep enough, don’t have enough. The feeling of lack surrounds us, when at the same time, so many of us have more than ever before. Why can unhappiness coexist with levels of consumption higher than ever before? Maybe, the reason is that we are trying to solve a problem with the wrong tool.

One of the core models of our times used to explain and to try to improve human well-being is utility. That ever-increasing function in economics which depicts that the way to increase one’s satisfaction comes from the more goods a person consumes and less time a person works. The thing is, focusing on acquiring more things to feel better just doesn’t work, as many civilizations have found through time.

On the contrary, one of the core findings of Buddhism is that watering greed or attachment/clinging is one of the main causes of suffering, causes of an unsatisfactory life. Similarly, opposite to what a utility function assumes, empirical research finds that satisfying work is one of the cornerstones to happiness.

The fact that we may be surprised when finding that higher levels of consumption don’t imply happier people points to the need of an updated model to guide our understanding of the optimal way for a human to improve their well-being.