To desire or not to desire a nation, that is the question

Fifth of the articles on the Catalonia-Spain conflict from the point of view of Happiness. Or how to be happy despite the political circumstances in which we live.
I am convinced that the different strategies that help us to be happier must be applied to the different vicissitudes of life in order to maintain happiness in the midst of so much restlessness. Next, I will explain my vision of this topic through eight of them.

8 strategies that I will comment on 8 different articles:

1. Reality and its lack of acceptance
2. We do not control anything
3. Binary thinking: with me or against me
4. Better to be fine than wanting to be right
5. To desire or not to desire a nation, that is the question
6. The pleasure of a nation or the absence of suffering a conflict
7. Life is not fair. Why has only one politician made a good choice?
8. Why 40% is a political issue and 60% is a problem of poor Communications

5. To desire or not to desire a nation, that is the question

«The second Noble Truth is: the origin of suffering is desire». Budha

One of the most notable differences in the concept of Happiness between the East and West is that in order to achieve happiness Westerners desire and Easterners do not desire.

For Westerners, a motor of life that helps us to be happy results from the pleasure we experience in achieving something desired, this makes us passionate about our ideals, persisting in this effort until we reach them.

We want something external, placed in the future, and we believe that we will only be happy when we achieve that goal which makes us, even unwittingly, postpone the daily happiness for what it will be.

Easterners, on the other hand, base their happiness on getting «not to desire», with an acceptance of the present and a happiness based on the detachment of external objects and their search inside the person. This acceptance of «what it is» makes them enjoy more of the now although they lack that «motor of improvement» that helps them to change certain circumstances.

While in the West we get happiness adding things (+).
In the East they obtain Happiness by subtracting (-), giving up thing.

We also see that in the West we project Happiness towards the Future.
While in the East, Happiness consists in living, being aware, of the Present.

These two attitudes to life or ways of understanding Happiness have pros and cons.

This vision makes Westerners do not conform so easily to what we have and tend to excellence, but as a counterpart gives us a permanent «point of dissatisfaction» that makes us never be completely happy with what we have obtained and try to get something more, go a little further in our aspirations. In my opinion, we Catalans have, by tradition, this point of dissatisfaction a little higher, which is good in terms of the effort we put into getting what we want, but it can be frustrating if at the end we can not get everything we want.

It also makes those who do not desire a thing, do not start to move on with ideas that they are not passionated for, or that they do not turn on the starter to maintain or defend something that they already enjoy.

Easterners, on the other hand, are more satisfied with what they have, with what life offers them. They are happy in the present moment, and they show no attachment for what has been achieved, but, in a certain way, with this attitude they partially give up fighting for a change that will encourage them to improve certain conditions of life.

Knowing in what cultural tradition we are educated will help us to understand the response mechanisms that drive us to some actions, and also to modulate our reply to them, as well as to consider the idea that we can give a different approach to our way of life, to the circumstances that we are living in, and to experience them in another way, in such a way that our Happiness is not compromised by them.

#BetalltoBlack entry 5 of 8