Final Note: The Common Good
[I originally wrote this text in Spanish. It was intended as an afterword of my first novel, The Mansion at the South of Maple Street. At some point during the creative process, I decided not to include it in the book. For some reason, I felt it wasn’t necessary anymore as part of the storytelling. On it, I am reflecting on happiness and success as a result of many conversations I had with friends throughout the drafting of my novel. The original Spanish version is available to read here].
To love and friendship
So, who has the right answer? Does the elixir of happiness reside in the East or in the West? These are two of the many exciting questions I was asked repeatedly during the last few months of writing my novel about one of Hong Kong’s most special neighbourhoods.
It is such a big responsibility to give answers to these crucial questions of our existence as human beings! And I don’t think I am in a position to do so. However, I would like to share some of the motivations that led me to understand certain aspects of life in a different way than what I was originally told in the West when I was growing up. This is a debate that can be approached from so many different angles.
I want to clarify beforehand that I do not intend to elevate one culture above the other. Something like that would feed an even more polarized vision of the world than the one we are already trapped in. I am aware that Asian societies face their own challenges and that no system is perfect. I was a witness to that.
One of the questions I often ask myself is what does it mean for humanity to achieve rampant growth? What happens when we reach a certain economic and political development that guarantees a better quality of life and the possibility of having higher expectations for the future? With this I want to draw attention to what I perceive as a lack of a more plural conversation. One in which other ways of doing things, facing challenges, filtering the environment, and communicating ideas that go beyond the West’s are taken into account.
Progress is a complex concept. It embodies a big leap forward. It leaves the past behind to make space for growth and fresh expectations for the future. Progress becomes an index to measure success and it only understands movement in one direction: forward. More, more and more.
One of the side effects of progress is that it is contributing to the dehumanization of our societies and the loss of basic human values such as intuition, consciousness, the ability to be in the moment and the importance of our personal and collective identity. The volatile expectations of achieving certain symbols of progress as guarantors of happiness have alienated human beings from the pillars of humanity.
How many times have I complained and wondered why do things in life have to feel so difficult sometimes? Why did I make this mistake… why did I make this decision… Surely, I went through many frustrating moments whilst living in Asia: the pressure of obtaining visas, the complexities that living in an authoritarian country like China entails, the complications imposed by living far away from my family ... my lack of knowledge of the Chinese language at first… the enormous challenge and the dynamics that working abroad entails ... the list is very long ... Why, why, why ... I could spend all day asking myself and getting frustrated with the same questions.
With maturity and the life experiences I acquired in Asia - especially when I was working as a journalist- it became clear that for a person with access to education, public health, freedoms and opportunities, life is not so much difficult but rather complex. My grandparents' generation in Spain did have a difficult life, for instance!
Life is essentially complex because we can’t control it. It is uncertain because it is governed by other unpredictable human beings like me.
Young couple enjoying the Intro Music Festival in Beijing, 2013.
As a result of this revelation, I personally try as much as possible not to use the word difficult to refer to my life. To some extent I feel it would be disrespectful to many of the people I met in Asia and for whom life is really very difficult as well as complex. They don’t enjoy a guaranteed welfare state by their governments, "decent" housing as we understand it in the first world, and they face serious financial difficulties to access education or health. The list of privileges that we take for granted in the first world is long ... very long ...
I wonder if this welfare that we presume to be the foundation of happiness and freedom in the developed world is what pushes us to put too many expectations on the external. On that comforting feeling that comes from lineal growth and achievements. Savoring success and receiving constant external recognition for being that successful! For having successful careers, high salaries, happy families, properties, a car, clothing, endless opportunities to travel…
We should all achieve that manifestation of success because the system we grow up in puts those expectations on us. Because it gives us the basics to meet goals, be happy and, of course, be successful. But what happens if we want a different life? If we want to be entrepreneurs? Work in creative fields? Or leave the city to live and work in the countryside? What if we want to just be ourselves? In whichever way but just be the best version of ourselves in a way that is meaningful to us.
Does this mean we will have a smaller chance of success by going off the beaten path and not pursuing what we are told we should be pursuing?
Possibly, you have come across many articles on how to be successful. They are usually headed with titles such as: the 10 habits of successful people, how successful people make decisions, the secrets of the productivity of successful people ... just to give some examples.
Often, most of these articles give similar advice: at what time and how many coffees we should have a day, the importance of a cold morning shower, getting up early, making fewer decisions a day, which may include having a minimalist wardrobe so as not to tire the brain making decisions about what clothes to wear, what type of food we should eat, what type of friendships we should have, and when is the best time to go to the gym ...
Interestingly, many accompany this biblical list of recommendations by arguing that people like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg achieved success because they followed similar guidelines to not waste the energy of their brains with worldly things and to have more focus and mental strength, among other virtues. So that they can focus their genius on more important things that can contribute to increasing the success that has already been granted to them. I am not criticizing it. Yes, order and routines are of great help to the discipline required to pursue our dreams. But what about the diversity of mindsets, habits and approaches to life and to the idea of success itself? Why isn’t it important to learn about the achievements of common people?
Another interesting thing about the aforementioned recipes for success is that they do not seem to leave much room for the powerful force of the flow of life, which is also another perspective on how to manage the energy that allows us to fight for what we want and for who we are.
In China, the number ‘6 六’ (liù) is considered an auspicious number because its pronunciation is very similar to the word ‘flow’ (liú). In fact, flow is a crucial concept in traditional Chinese culture. It has its foundations in the principles of Daoism. In this context, our existence is understood as a circular motion made of the decisions we make in life.
Under this approach, a linear progress is not possible because there is no room for linear goals. Flow calls for our innate ability to be spontaneous and to trust our intuition under a process of learning about life and connecting with the essence of our unique being. If we cultivate it, we will often be able to live in balance, facing unpredictable obstacles of daily life without having too many expectations.
I feel this is a very humane way of appreciating life. Focused on reason, knowledge, emotions and intuition. Nowadays, Western culture has embraced other foundations. But traditionally Western ancient philosophers encouraged us to seek inner peace in order to live. Later on, in the 60s and the 70s, Europe and the West were making a clear call for freedom and respect for the individual identity of each person as the key to happiness. There are very good Rock and Pop songs from those years that make a clarion call to embrace diversity and the flow of life!
The same questions and similar answers have been out there for centuries and across various cultures. That desire to be ourselves, trust ourselves and embrace who we are in order to be happy beyond what the environment supplies us. But also we should not forget that deference to the other and the sense of belonging to a compassionate community makes us happier. Because respect, love and friendship are essentially intuitive (human) and the key to our connection to the environment and to the protection of the common good.
Video above by Zap Studios