From Caracas to London

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking with my kids back to South Kensington station after a morning visit to the Science Museum when we stumbled upon a London Underground musician who was playing a famous Brazilian tune which I have known since childhood. “…Mamá yo quiero, mamá yo quiero, mamaaaá yo quiero mamá…” As the guitarist played the cheerful tune, the boys asked me if I could give them some coins to drop inside his open guitar case. Smiling at them, he shifted the song to “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and played it exclusively for his audience of two. He stroke me as a very happy man. I’m sure you have met people like that too. People who seem to just have freed themselves from all possible burdens and instead, carry their happiness everywhere, sharing it with whomever is willing to take a piece from their generous bounty.  The man told me he was a retired musician. He had been a member of a jazz band called The Pals, which for many years had played at different bars and clubs across Europe. He had also been a professional boxer in his youth, and showed me one faded picture of himself standing in the ring, hands covered with thick white gloves, in a ready-to-punch position. He was a beautiful old man from Ghana, who had emigrated at a very young age because of his country’s political woes. Nonetheless, he had managed to build a successful life in Britain, the clearest evidence resting in his peaceful eyes and the liveliness of his spirit.

The joyful trace the musician left in my heart for the rest of that half-term day, reminded me of another man I had met years before and who had left a similar mark on me. He was an English handyman I had hired to carry out some decoration work in my former flat. When I opened the door to greet him, I found a tall well built man surrounded by a massive blanket of happiness, the sort that quickly spreads and wraps around everyone else in the room. Quite soon into our conversation, I noticed that he was incredibly proud of his family. He talked proudly of his marathon-runner wife, his successful oldest son who worked at FIFA and his other two children who were great at school and did all sorts of amazing things. My eldest son was just a baby back then but I remember taking careful note in my mind, still savouring the cheerful atmosphere the man had left in my flat after leaving: “I will always celebrate my family’s achievements instead of  focusing on their flaws because I want to be as happy as this wonderful handyman!”

René Descartes, my second all time favourite philosopher after Bertrand Russell, once wrote: “I think that in order to find the most difficult truths, provided we are well guided, the only necessity is to have common sense.” He also mentioned how “there are certain things which we render more obscure by trying to define them, because, since they are very simple and clear, we cannot know and perceive them better than by themselves.” This is the case with happiness, a simple and clear “truth,” which we keep on obscuring and misinterpreting. Happiness is neither money, nor a “look,” nor a particular job, nor a particular lifestyle. Happiness is something much simpler. So simple that everyone -no matter where they come from, or what level of education they have or how much money they possess or lack- absolutely everyone can attain it. What I have learned so far, nonetheless, is that real happiness cannot be achieved without some level of wisdom; the sort of wisdom displayed by my two favourite philosophers and equally displayed by the jazz musician and the English handyman. The sort of wisdom that has nothing to do with knowledge but has plenty to do with common sense. The sort of wisdom which the wisest of men and the wisest of women share humbly rather than condescendingly; always gently and never imposingly.

————————————————

Don’t be afraid to read it! Key Philosophical Writings by René Descartes, 1997. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature. I especially recommend The Discourse on the Method and The Search After Truth.

And just because I couldn’t add it to the article, here is one of my favourite excerpts from the Discourse on the Method:

“In the same way, making what is called a virtue out of a necessity, we should no more desire to be well, if ill, or free, if in prison, than we now do to have our bodies formed of a substance as little corruptible as diamonds, or to have wings to fly with like birds. I allow, however, that to accustom oneself to regard all things from this point of view requires long exercise and meditation often repeated and I believe that it is principally in this that is to be found the secret of those philosophers who, in ancient times, were able to free themselves from the empire of fortune, or, despite suffering or poverty, to rival their gods in their happiness. For, ceaselessly occupying themselves in considering the limits which were prescribed to them by nature, they persuaded themselves so completely that nothing was within their own power but their thoughts, that this conviction alone was sufficient to prevent their having any longing for other things.” (p88)