Where to find happiness?
Here’s an interesting observation as a result of my interview with 2012 expert Robert K. Sitler, Ph.D. He told me how he’s always sad when he comes back to the US from Guatemala or Yucatan where he’s been visiting with modern-day Maya.
I said, “Did I hear you right? Aren’t they very poor and live in one-room mud and wattle houses? Shouldn’t you be happy to get back to civilization?”
He said that I had heard him right. He is sad because they have such a richness of spirit, family and intimacy. In comparison, returning to the US feels cold, lonely and as if most people are depressed. He said that many modern-day Maya are very happy even though they have little material possessions. He said that their children are also very happy even though they don’t have toys but only use natural objects like stones and sticks for fanciful play. They also revere the natural world in which they live.
Here’s my experience. On my way down to the Winter Star Party, every restaurant where we stopped that also had a gift shop, I wanted to buy something such as marble Easter eggs, bowls with rabbits painted on them, and stuffed bunnies for Easter. We decided to buy these items on the way home from our week of star gazing.
However, after the friendship, conviviality of fellow amateur astronomers as well as living in nature in a rustic cabin – we also lived by nature’s rhythms since we couldn’t use electricity after dark to preserve our night vision – I felt so content within myself that on the way home from the Winter Stay Party, all the things I thought I needed and wanted to buy meant nothing to me.
Was it because of the intimacy, friendship and closeness to nature – the way the Maya live – that I did not need things to make me happy?
Very interesting is all I can say!
