Poverty

There is nothing worse in the world than poverty. It is the supreme form of unhappiness. By nature we can live up to our dignity as humans only when we have freedom. The freedom to think and to act. Nothing's more important for us. It is the first premise we must get in order to prove to ourselves and to the world who we are, where we belong and what we deserve.

One of the things that makes me highly indignant is the ignorance of people when it comes to poverty and the devastating effect it has on people. It affects the power of action, which means the poor are almost never fulfilled as personalities, and the power of mind, which means they have no control over what is the path they want to follow intellectually. Lack of freedom in all spheres of life build up a certain net through which the poor are able to see. There are no clear images in front of them, tomorrow is never a secure day and yesterday is never a happy past.

Nothing's more cruel than the inequality we face in life. And the largest part of this cruelty is represented by poor and suffering women worldwide. These days there's a campaign organized by CARE which has the project of helping the poorest women in the world. It made me think about the enormous difficulties women face worldwide, sometimes the basic needs not being met. These women have never known a different life than the one identified with hardships, needs, shortages, worries, misery. They have never experienced the feeling of those who are given things and whose credit comes from taking advantage of them.

We should never be judged by the place we were born in, it is no decision of ours.

And why not be smart AND happy?

I came across one of Hemingway's quotes a couple of days ago, which says: Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. It got me thinking, it's not as if there's anything new about the statement, I have already been through the stage where I would go about life and pretend to bear the cross of unhappiness as a result of intelligence. This time it made me wonder whether there's a way out of misery for those whose mind never stops working.

First of all, the intelligence is so closely interconnected to unhappiness because the world's a battlefield where the rules of the fight are not dictated by reason, but by instincts. And life is all about fight. Fight for a better place, for a warmer bed, for a softer chair. The principles of fight are quite distinct among people, based on who they are and how they think or how much they think. It's quite a blissful experience when one doesn't spend much time thinking about things, one which I have always longed to have. Therefore, intelligence is all about considering the complexity of things, taking out the mediocre and futile, focusing only on meaningfulness and relevance. But this is such a strain of mind! Smartness means high levels of expectations, hence low chances of satisfaction.

One thing brightness should be in search of is creating happiness out of any situation of life. One must infiltrate satisfaction in everything one does and adjust things and activities to one's tastes and desires so that life becomes more bearable and even enjoyable. But then again, this is a very simplistic way of putting it and it takes a very long way to get to the simple part of everything. But one should try and excel at everything one puts one's mind to. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Reading fiction improves our social skills

I remember I had always been good at deciding whether somebody was a good or a bad person from a first encounter. And I mainly exercised this ability in high school and at the university, when I used to give verdicts about teachers to my colleagues: this one's good, oh! that one is a bitch. And it always turned out I had been right. And where was it that I learned so much about people? It was definitely not from a very intense social interaction I was part of on a regular basis. No, my social skills came from a different source, one which used to be considered giving opposite results: reading fiction.

Novelist and psychologist Keith Oatley argues that fiction can help us empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves. It can facilitate our understanding of some other worlds than ours and it makes us better when interacting with others. Now I have got my answer. I have been really puzzled by how I was able to understand others, by the way I managed to get through to people by just asking the questions they were eager to answer and by trying to find out things they liked to talk about and then introduce them into our conversations. I am very fond of my findings in terms of people and their worlds and I rarely like to talk about my own, I'd rather keep it to myself, unless somebody is really interested in hearing about it.

It turns out my fiction reading throughout the years does not have the effect of alienating me from reality, on the contrary, it gets me closer to it, it helps me comprehend things and people through a different way; not by direct contact, but by reading of worlds where people live their lives and aren't aware of somebody studying them; of all the worlds which one cannot possibly manage to come in contact with in real life, but nonetheless available to us and accessible at any time of life.

There's no bigger joy in life than reading a very good book, which depicts a world of people that go through the things you thought could happen only to you. There's no other pleasure than finding out that there have been and will be people just like you, that a direct contact with someone you like is not the only choice given by life.

Simplicity in the way of being

If I were to cast a long and careful glance in the past, I would definitely be able to see an almost painful longing for a different way of being. I knew what it was back then, but I knew it only at the emotional level, not exactly aware of the whereabouts of all those feelings of craving for something else, for what I did not have, a rebellion against a wave of thoughts and actions which, though being mine, I did not accept as being truly representative of who I was or what I wanted.

I have always been fond of simplicity; simplicity in food, in clothes, in the relationship with others, in all approaches of life. And when I saw simplicity, I would fall in love with it. Because being simple in your very nature means being satisfied with life, even being grateful that you are alive. I cannot think of a better existential perspective. The struggle for a more positive view on life has marked my whole existence so far. I've been looking for reasons as long as I can remember, and I've got quite good memory. Am I the contrast of simplicity? No, not exactly. Would simplicity save me? It definitely would.

A conformity to the given state of things offers more satisfaction in what one does and goes through. The more pretenses we have in life, the more we want to achieve, the less happy we are with everything. There is no end to our aspirations, the moment we reach a certain goal, another takes its place and so it goes forever. I have met people who were so far behind others in terms of success and personal achievements, but who would turn out to be models of optimism, of wonderful optimism. My deep admiration goes to them. A movie I have recently seen reminded me again of how fortunate one can be if one finds simplicity and makes it a friend for life.

We are what and who we like

Life, it seems to me, has fundamentally one significant route provided for us, that of love. Love for people, love for things, love for an identified piece of the large spectrum of choices we are provided with in the world. It shapes our lives, it never vanishes from inside us and accompanies us till the end of the road.

We are whom we love. Just like what we wear every day expresses loyally our approach to the things surrounding us, our preferences in terms of people is the expression of our emotional and spiritual development. Our worthiness in the world is measured by the appreciation of others, and the quality has priority over quantity. We tend to establish certain patterns of behavior and adopt certain attitudes by affiliation to who might judge us.

We all have an audience in life, even though for the majority of us it's just an imaginary one. It helps us get perspective and I surely believe it helps us improve ourselves. Reputation is a value of a powerful significance for our peace of mind and it totally depends on how we live our lives in the eyes of the others. And by others I mean that small group of people you have picked out to represent the way of life to your liking. Only certain people matter for each of us and one should persevere in finding the people one believes matter for oneself. They will be the ones to help us become better persons by a daily scrutiny of the values they cherish and we must have.