Still Sundays

November 4, 2012.

On the movie “Happy :)” and why “communities” don’t work.

Stillness feels like a shooting star when going through transitions of epic proportions, short-lived but enough to inspire awe.

Climate shifts. Earth rifts. Cosmic drifts. Yet personal changes are never swift.

A hurricane storm of immense proportion has come and gone and yet it was unable to make most people see what truly matters. A friend’s husband in New York City had to “go somewhere, anywhere, doesn’t matter where, to find Internet and electricity, to carry international trading as usual.”

What will it take? Do we really have to start all over again?

We watched a wonderful documentary film called “Happy : )” which is directed by Roko Belic.  It is available on Netflix. I was expecting it to be mainstream-self-help-to-make-money-on-the-side positive-psychology meets new-spins-on-ancient-obvious-wisdom.

But it was not. It was short, simple, and extremely well done.  There was no sugarcoating poverty. There were no one-size-fits-all jolly-rancher-wisdom quotes collected by an “author” who might be married to the son of a former Treasury Secretary under Clinton, a former employee of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

The movie showed people who had endured immense adversity yet they were still identifiably happy. It was not bite-size-quotable-happiness wisdom for people who are miserable because they believe there is just something missing from their lives because there is really just nothing missing from their lives. We are constantly bombarded with how feeling certain emotions looks like.

The movie emphasized that happiness needs to be practiced on a regular basis, that it looks different for everyone despite certain factors that are common in all happy people (a support network, some form of exercise, etc.), happiness is our true nature, and it can be cultivated by doing the things we love to do. There is no formula for doing things we love to do other than doing them.

I paraphrase the following from the movie:

Anyone who thinks money doesn’t bring you happiness needs to go talk to the homeless man living under the bridge. But anyone who thinks more money brings you more happiness needs to talk to Bill Gates.

There is a quantifiable difference in amount of happiness between someone who makes $5000 a year and $50,000. But it was found that in the U.S. once a person makes $50,000 per year, anything after that makes no difference in happiness, including $500,000.

The point being that once one’s basic needs—food, shelter, transportation, few, small luxuries—are met, more money is not necessarily going to offer anything other than more things.

I will always remember the time when I expressed my uncontainable joy to a new author upon the financial success of the first book. I had said, “I hope this brings you millions and millions more!” I had meant it in the context that I hope the book gets even more exposure, the result of which might also mean money. I will always remember this author’s answer, “That would certainly be nice but I can still live happily and do exactly what I want to do in much less than that; $50,000 ought to suffice.”

The movie also emphasized how people who thought they were “happy” felt they had a strong, supportive network of community.

I noted how our concept of “community” (online or off line) has been sensationalized to mean something no one even understands.

In the beginning, thanks to the Internet, online communities offered connecting across geographic boundaries to support one another. Now people just want to lazily “watch” what someone is doing as if each individual is a reality T.V. channel.  Sense of engagement consists of not really thinking about what the other person is trying to achieve  but instead of offering bobble-headed comments so as to be noticed by someone you haven’t talked to in awhile. In a real community, people have a real interest.

The definition of the term community has always included the following despite its varying definitions: “a group of people who share common values.” It is not a group of people who do the same things. It is not a group of people who live in the same area. It is not a group of people you have always known. It is not a group of people who happen to be subscribed to the same news feeds. Although, of course, people who live in the same area, who do the same thing, whom one has known for as long as possible, might prescribe to a similar set of values. However, this is not a guarantee.

One would think a group of people who all liked to write or draw or worship a particular deity or dress a certain way or attend the same yoga studio all shared same values but this is not so as life has taught us.  There are many people who go to church because there is nothing better to do or cover their head when they don’t have to nor want to but do so because they are ashamed of attracting attention. There are many people who go to a bar to grab a beer and others to escape their marital relationship and others “just because.”

This is precisely why writers’ and artists’ so called “communities” fail as well: people are there for different reasons. Some people want to be heard. Some people want to make friends with people with similar interests. Some people want to feel accepted as professionals. Some people want to grow. Some people want to assert their egos. Although none of the aforementioned reasons are “wrong” but they might not serve similar values and hence the so called friendships vaporize after time spent together or one comes out feeling not having attained a support network that lasts beyond the prescribed setting and agendas.

In the example of artists and writers, one can only control one’s commitment to the craft.

In the example of friendships, one can only exercise loyalty to one’s principles and personal development.

And in all cases, one hopes that the purest, clearest intention attracts similar energy for long-lasting support.

I don’t know what it is like to grow up in the same place for one’s entire life where there is an obligatory sense of participation in a community which doesn’t share same values. I don’t know what it is like to grow up in a place so small that if one doesn’t participate in the few things offered within the community it means completely ostracizing oneself. I am not sure I could have stayed in any place like that under any obligations. I would have hitched a ride out of town and dealt with the guilt of abandoning later. I consider it an immense privilege to be able to assert integrity, sincerity, and desire for personal development as mandates for the communities in which I enjoy belonging.

Perhaps its as simple as people don’t even know what it is they value and therefore they don’t even know what is it that they would like to cultivate in a community.

It’s hard to truly feel a sense of community or happiness in a day and age where the primary obsession is to be liked. Even if by someone’s pet goat. Or a click of a “mouse”. Same difference.

Fans are cute but long-term support comes from people who share common values.

I am grateful that I have found a small group of folks who consider braiding thoughts in stillness a real value. This is even more true now when I have much else going on in a very transitional period trying to settle on a new coast that doesn’t allow time for creating fiction other than collecting sentences, like grains of sands.

Stillness is a value that keeps me going.

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