Mood Swings:
Can't buy me love
By Yasmine El-Rashidi
Happiness is an arduous state to reach. Contentment is not much easier. Most of us are too busy wanting, needing, and desiring what we don't already have. And then we want more.
Peace of mind is not often on that list.
A recent study published in the UK's New Scientist magazine looked at 65 countries around the world and their "happiness rank". Nigeria came top of the list, with "the highest percentage of happy people," followed by Mexico, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. Russia, Armenia and Romania have the fewest.
Where exactly on that list Egypt falls was not made apparent, but one thing was clear -- the happiest nations in the world are not consumed by 'stuff'.
"The survey appears to confirm the old adage that money can't buy happiness," BBC News reported on the survey this week. "The researchers for World Values Survey described the desire for material goods as a 'happiness suppressant'."
I took the time to do my own little survey of Cairenes, speaking to 20-odd people from all walks and scopes of life.
"No way," came one response echoed by another.
Happiness bonus points included satisfying job, nice car, nice house, more money, less 'problems', and the discovery of the unknown.
"I'm not happy," said one young woman. "Because I still haven't found what it is that will make me happy."
That search, she will ultimately discover as she reaches out to tangibles in the form of things and places and people, will spiral out of control.
I happen to know this young woman quite well, and have often heard her lament about life.
"I'm too fat, I'm bored, I'm fed-up," she has moaned time and again, as she slumped on the sofa, or often in bed in her comfortable home -- the AC on, the scented candles lit, and the TV or sound system humming in the background. "I'm depressed," she would go on to announce.
Her pathway to happiness, she believed -- like many young women and men -- was a change of exterior; hair, clothes, the boundaries that mark physical space consumption. Plus the desire to be whisked out of the country and leave her troubles behind.
I am compassionate because I was once her -- never satisfied with personal, professional, physical anythings. The goal of 10 published articles would turn into 20, the three lost kilos would turn into six, and the one day of not arguing with my parents and brother would need to be 10.
So I packed all my belongings and left to New York, vowing to re-invent myself and leave all my "issues" behind. It didn't work, of course, and when I finally returned, I found myself back in square one. So I moaned.
It is only recently that the bubble of discontent has been burst.
It started with the dissolving of the family several years ago -- my brother off to England and my father out of the house -- and continued with a trickle of family problems.
"You have four days to get as much as you can out of the house," the lawyer told my mother over the phone a couple of weeks ago. "The bailiffs have a decree from the court to come to the house and confiscate your belongings," he continued. "They'll be there Tuesday morning at 7am."
The belongings in the house -- minus some items and the personal things -- were not quite ours, but reflected, rather, the passing down of a family house and its belongings to three sisters and a brother. And the debt from nearly 30 years earlier was not quite ours either. But the address of this house that my grandparents built in 1941, is one that has been used by many in its 63 years.
"They will come in and make a list of items," it was explained to us. "Then an auction date will be set for the things to be auctioned off. Nothing can leave the house once the bailiff has been."
We planned to appeal the "list" and action, but were told to pack nevertheless.
"There is always a one per cent chance we lose the case," the lawyer cautioned.
For four days we wrapped, boxed, taped and labeled. My cousins came, my aunt and uncle came, my brother's and mother's, and my own friends came too. The process was interrupted by phone calls of support, friends bringing food, and truck loads being sent left and right to various vacant apartments and offices.
But as the hours until the arrival dwindled, so too did the determination to sap the house of its insides.
"What about the music system," someone asked. "And the encyclopaedias," another offered. "And you're going to leave the microwave?" a friend questioned.
By that point, our personal belongings ceased to concern me. We had emptied the house of the basics (fridge, washing machine), and had saved the valuable and shared items of inheritance. We still had beds to sleep in, food to eat, and a home to live in. And for the first time in what I felt was my lifetime, we were enveloped with unconditional support by more people than I knew cared.
The night before they came, a gathering of us sat in our quite, empty, living room. We laughed at my mother and aunt straightening the pictures and wiping finger prints off the walls, and we teased my brother's French houseguest -- who no longer had any furniture in his room.
"Spring cleaning," my mother laughed. "I've been saying for weeks I want to clean up the house. Now," she smiled, "It's done."
For years I'd complained the house was too full of stuff, too gloomy and lifeless. That night it hit me that things had drastically changed. Physically the place was empty -- devoid of its characteristic clutter. But within those empty walls, there was a warmth I had not felt before.
The 'stuff' is most certainly gone, but the energy is very much back.
