Redefining Happiness
The poor farming town I lived in in Peru taught me about real happiness…
Last year I lived in a small town in the Sacred Valley in Peru, amongst a community of corn farmers.
Each family in the neighborhood had their own little plot of land that they tended to. Each morning I would step into my garden overlooking the valley and take in the status of the corn. Over the course of a few months, I watched the corn grow from knee-high to 8 feet tall. I watched the men and women cut the corn and carry big stalks on their backs. One day I woke up to see yellow corn lining the roofs of all the houses nearby. (Apparently this is how they dry the corn before sending it off.) As the weeks went by, the fields cleared, the corn dried, and eventually it all disappeared into the hands of American and Japanese customers (so I was told).
This was their life work.
And I couldn’t believe how hard they worked, all day, in the hot sun and the pouring rain. I imagined how their bodies ached, especially the older ones with weathered skin and deep lines by their eyes, who seemed to work just as hard as the younger ones.
When I’d go to the market, I could buy a bag of corn for less than a dollar. They couldn’t have been making much money selling their corn in bulk to foreign buyers. Doing backbreaking work, for barely any money, how awful, said my western capitalist mind. What a sad life.
Yet when I would walk around town, everyone seemed happy. They’d smile at me with their toothless grins. They’d spend their weekends hanging with their families, making chicha, a delicious Peruvian fermented corn drink. Kids ran around the streets playing. They would gather in the squares to sell food, talk, and weave.
This completely changed my view of the world. Here are impoverished people doing backbreaking work all day and night, living in a third world country with dilapidated buildings and little government support, and they’re -- happy?!
They even seemed happier than many of my privileged American friends who make six figures a year and complain when GrubHub delivers their food 10 minutes late.
I’d been raised to think that making a lot of money and being successful in my career would make me happy. I didn’t even think to question it. I thought this ideology was the truth.
So I thought the day I sold my business and got financial freedom, I would be ELATED. But... I wasn’t. The day after the acquisition of the company, I still had the same level of happiness than I did the day before when I had way less money in the bank.
These Peruvian farmers showed me what I now know to be true: happiness is not found by anything external -- not money, not praise, not success -- happiness is generated from within and can be found in the simplest, purest parts of life.
We have to be honest with ourselves: are we actually happier with all of our modern conveniences and “things” we buy with the excess money we make in America? Do our conveniences allow us to live life more because we don’t have to do our own chores, or are we just spending more hours at work? Are we actually any happier when we have a few more success metrics on our resumes?
If you look at the rates of depression, suicide, addiction, obesity and abuse in the US, I’d say we’re not much happier than people without these things, maybe even less happy, based on what I observed living in Latin America for a year.
A simple life is not a “bad” life or a sad life. It doesn’t make you inferior or less evolved or less worthy. I believe it’s actually a pure and beautiful life. Because when you can find true happiness in the simple things -- good health, family, friends, food, and a connection with the land -- everything else is just gravy.
Once I began to question the traditional American road to happiness, I started to discover what truly filled me up. Now I’m building a life for myself based on that, and not what society tells me should bring me more joy.
I share this story as an invitation to do the same, so you don’t wake up after a lifetime of running on the hamster wheel towards success wondering where’s that happiness that you were promised…
No one’s gonna give it to you. You have to claim it for yourself.
So I urge you to question, question, question everything. Question the real motivation behind your purchases and your decisions at work. Be honest with yourself.
And here’s a good challenge: Try going 30 days without spending on anything you don’t absolutely need (no restaurants, no Ubers, no new clothes, etc.). This will help you find pleasure in the simple things and will recontextualize the way you spend your time and money. It won’t be easy! But it will probably teach you a lot about yourself.
Let me know if you do this! I’d love to hear about your experience.
