Stop complaining...part I

For some time I've been meeting with Tony. He's a young man, 23 years old. Not so long ago he married to the love of his life. Generally, Tony has everything he wants. Still, he feels unhappy. It's as if his life is without meaning.

"I work so hard, and still have nothing out of it. We scrape by, I can't afford anything," he told me recently.

"That means you don't have enough money to last till the end of the month?" I asked.

"Well, we have enough."

"You can't go to the restaurant, and eat dinner with your wife?" I continued.

"Yeah, we do that whenever we want."

Umm... I thought their financial situation isn't that bad. But I wanted to show better insight.

"So you mean that you work on and on, and recently you couldn't buy anything for yourself, right?"

"Well... To be honest, I bought a new tablet, a laptop, a car for my wife, we paid the deposit on our new flat, and we ordered some things to arrange our new home."

It doesn't look like poverty. Honestly, I'd personally like to make such investments in just a few months. I hope you understand what I mean. Our situation isn't that bad. Actually, we have no reasons to complain, but still we do that. Why? Because we're infected. We expect to receive everything here and now. Just think about our parents. They were trying to make money for years. And buying a washing machine was like winning the Pulitzer Prize.

But with Tony, as with many others, it's not the end of the story. The matter is much deeper. Their lack of happiness is hidden deep inside, and they don't know how to dig it out.

"I have to admit that your situation is quite good. You bought a lot of expensive things in recent months," I said.

"Yeah, it's somehow true, but it didn't make me happy at all."

Gotcha! This is the key to his mystery. The heart of that man stopped beating. Sadly, it happens to majority of them now.

The worst, what keeps us down, grabbing our will to fight, is to place us in a framework. We live in times focused on possession, not on real values. They made us believe that we need to possess. Our parents wanted to possess because they came out of poverty. People all around us buy, possess, and brag about their belongings. Social media is full of boasting, showing off about material things. And on the top of that mountain there are the advertisers persuading us how their product would make us happy. That's why we all want to possess, nothing more. Then, when we become the owners of our desired thing, we realize that it didn't make us happy at all. Because it's just a Kinder Egg without a toy inside. It's something completely worthless. And something worthless can't give us happiness.

"Then, what makes you happy?" I asked Tony.

"I love repairing cars. You know, this dirt, oil, they don't bother me at all. But the satisfaction I have after giving a new life to something broken... Yeah, that's what makes me happy. I forget about the time then."

"Then, why don't you do that instead of working on things you don't really like, and spending money on things you don't really need?"

"Well, it's all because I can't find a job like that in this country."

And that's the other calamity. Especially for men. We stopped fighting. Someone would tell us: "Don't apply for that job, they won't hire you," and we back out. But why?

I recommend for all of you the movie called 'The pursuit of happyness', based on the true story of Chris Gardner. It talks about his struggle in finding a job. About his transformation from a homeless man to a thriving broker.