Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Search / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

Wishing You Health, Prosperity, and Happiness in the New Year (Part 3 – Happiness) 

by Theresa Fritz Camoriano

Most people want to be happy and proceed to make decisions that they think will lead to their happiness – except, of course, for Senator Lieberman, who, considering his incessant whining, seems to enjoy being miserable.  But what is happiness?  For each of us, it is something different.  I think happiness means setting meaningful goals and striving to achieve them – and living in accordance with a set of standards or a moral framework in which we believe.  For you, happiness may mean something else.  Since each of us has a different idea of what happiness is, nobody else can determine it for us, and it cannot be dictated to us by some government entity.  In order to pursue happiness in our lives, we must have freedom.

I would like to share with you the story of Juan Ovalle, an engineer in Tampico, Mexico.  Juan was the eldest of eight children born to a very poor sharecropper farmer.  Juan attended school through the third grade.  Then, his father told him he had to stop going to school and begin working full time on the farm.  His father thought going to school was a waste of Juan’s time; it would not produce better crops, and that was what Juan needed to do in order to be successful.  However, Juan disagreed with his father and wanted to continue his education.

Juan’s father agreed that he could continue going to school, provided that he earned the money he needed to cover his school expenses, and provided that he continued to take care of all his chores on the farm.  So Juan did just that, working for others to earn money for school, doing his school work, and working on the farm.  Juan and his younger brothers used to walk to school along a dirt road.  It was usually hot and dusty, but there was a water faucet on the side of the road, where people could stop for a drink of water.  One day, when stopping at the water faucet, Juan promised his brother that someday he would be driving along that road in a car.  His brother just laughed.  Such a dream seemed impossible for the children of a peon farmer.

By the time Juan was twelve years old, he decided that he needed to go to the city to find better opportunities, so he moved to Tampico.  He would look for jobs at places that were very close to school.  He worked until he heard the school bell ring, then ran to school to attend classes.  As soon as school was over, he ran back to work.  When he finished high school, he continued working at progressively better-paying jobs, working his way through college, and obtained an engineering degree.

When he was working for a subcontractor that did maintenance work for a large corporation, a man came to the subcontractor and asked whether Juan’s employer could assemble and erect a distillation column for his business.  Juan’s boss wasn’t interested in that job, but Juan looked at the drawings and believed he could do it.  The boss told Juan to bid the job at a very high price, which he did.  The man accepted the offer, and Juan proceeded to come up with a novel way of erecting the column, doing it in record time.  When the job was finished, the man gave Juan two large bags of money, which Juan dutifully brought back to his boss.

The boss asked Juan what the money was for, and Juan explained that he had done the job they had talked about earlier, and this was payment for the job.  The boss then counted out the money, took a substantial amount for the business, and gave a substantial amount to Juan.  Juan was thrilled!  He now had enough money to buy a used 1969 white Ford Mustang Mach I with a leather interior, which he had been eyeing for a long time.  He bought the car and then proudly drove out to the farm to visit his family.

Juan’s mother asked him where he got the car, and he told her it belonged to his employer.  She was very worried, telling him that he’d better be very careful with the car.  If anything happened to it, Juan could get into serious trouble.  Juan then took his mother and brother for a drive, passing along the old dirt road and stopping at the water faucet for a drink.  While they were getting a drink of water, he asked his brother whether he remembered Juan’s earlier promise that he would drive along that road in a car.  His brother remembered and agreed that Juan had really kept his childhood promise.  Juan then opened the glove compartment and proudly revealed to his mother and brother that, not only was he driving the car along the road as promised, but he was the actual owner of the car!

Over the years, Juan helped his younger siblings get an education, built his parents a solid, cement block home in town to replace their old, wooden shanty, and found himself a better job, working for a larger company, where he could use his ingenuity to good purpose.  He is now married, with children who are also very bright and motivated.  His wife is a nurse.  Juan still drives a used car, and he would like to have a more modern computer than the antique he can afford, so he is certainly not rich by U.S. standards.  If he stopped to think about it, he might think that he is not treated as well as people who were born wealthier than he.  He might consider that a person with his skills living in the U.S. would make much more money.  But, despite the many obstacles that have stood in his path (or perhaps because of them), Juan is happy. 

Juan has spent his life striving toward goals and reaching them.  He has treated obstacles as challenges to be overcome.  In the process, he has improved his own life, the lives of his brothers and sisters, the lives of his parents, and the lives of his wife and children.  He must have a tremendous sense of pride and satisfaction!

But consider what his life would have been if he had not had the freedom to pursue his own goals. 

*What if Mexico had child labor laws that prevented Juan from working to earn money from the age of eight?  Then he would have been trapped in poverty, with no means of escape.

*What if Juan had not been free to negotiate the deal to erect the distillation column – if there had been price caps or other regulations that prevented him from solving the man’s problem at a handsome profit?  Then the distillation column might not have been erected, preventing a profitable business from starting up, and Juan might not have been able to amass enough money to buy his first car.

*What if some “kindly” government entity had put Juan’s family on welfare, so the family received payments from the government for food and housing?  Would Juan still have developed the drive and determination to succeed under those circumstances?  Or, as is common in the U.S., would Juan and his family have remained poor – trapped in the welfare system?

Clearly, freedom was an integral part of Juan’s being able to achieve his tremendous success and to improve the lives of so many people.  In the same way, freedom is necessary for each of us to pursue our own forms of happiness.

So how can we seek our own happiness?

Let’s say we are not happy with our lives.  We have not achieved the goals we had set for ourselves, and we are disappointed.  What can we do about it? 

Choice #1:  We can continue doing whatever it is that got us to this point, which is likely to get us more of the same.  We might feel good in the short term, in that we pretty much know what to expect, but the long term result is likely to be that we continue to be unhappy. 

Choice #2:  We can look for someone to blame for our predicament and spend our time wallowing in self-pity.  For example, we can think that what is holding us back is that other people are unfairly prejudiced against us.  Or we can blame our parents or our teachers or corporate America or the government or some left- or right-wing conspiracy or institution.  This feels really good in the short term, because it relieves us of responsibility, but it also leaves us in the same crummy spot for the rest of our lives.

Choice #3:  We can wait for Prince Charming or Uncle Sam or the Powerball Jackpot to come along and whisk us away into the life of which we dream. … and dream…..and dream…...

Or:

Choice #4:  We can use Juan as a source of inspiration.  Like Juan, we can realize that, no matter what forces or obstacles are arrayed against us, we can set goals and use our talents to strive toward those goals.  Like Juan, we may choose to forego immediate gratification as we work toward our longer-term goals.  Maybe we will give up free time in order to get an education or work a second job and save our money in order to invest in a business venture. This might not feel so good in the short term.  Whining and complaining are certainly easier.    But this is the route that will lead to real improvements in our lives. 

What route do most politicians propose for us? 

Politicians tend to cater to our unhappiness and tell us that our misery isn’t our fault.  They give us lots of people to blame for our lack of success – bigots, corporations, rich people, etc., and they promise to attack those folks for us.  They promise to give us money and jobs and housing and to relieve us of all responsibility for our own lives.  This makes the politicians seem very “compassionate”, and it makes them popular, but it is just the ticket to ensure that we remain in our miserable ruts! 

If we have any sense, we will not buy their baloney or get hooked on their handouts.  We will take charge of our own lives as Juan did.  We will consider the many obstacles in life to be challenges, and we will take pride and pleasure in overcoming them.  And, from our struggles and achievements in overcoming those obstacles, we are likely to find real happiness. 

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest / Search / White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN