Maxim Review: Happiness is having few needs

"Happiness is not found in how much you have but how little you need."

Maxims like this always make me want to do a reality check. Who knows if the authors had been smoking something when they wrote it, ha ha. So I look around me, at the rat race, at the clarion calls for achievement, at the appreciation and recognition that we all crave to see how we stand up to this gem of a wise saying.

Conclusion: Fail.

Let's not kid ourselves. Whether in the kampung or the big city, happiness IS measured by how much we have. The average man has 4 mouths to feed, a roof to keep over his head, education of the little ones to pay for, two cars to get around in, a job to keep (to pay those loans), and hobbies to while away his time. Its just being normal.

And don't forget being filial. We owe it to our parents to show that they didn't raise a loser. At a minimum we must have property. Children enrolled in top schools would be nice, plus a sweet smelling name they can be proud of. This last one is a trophy you get for standing out in business or politics, usually after beating your opponents silly. The icing on the cake is to have your glory celebrated in the newspapers or your name stamped on products in shops across the country. The cherry on the icing is to have a building or road named after you - Wisma [your name] or Jalan [your name], a famous landmark that will keep the family proud for generations.

No parent I've spoken to has ever said, "I think my daughter would be happy if she aspired to have next to nothing." Then why do so many nod their heads to the saying "Happiness is not found in how much you have but how little you need?"

Let me point to what I think is a flaw in the saying. The maxim implies less is more. Wrong! 99% of the people out there would say come on lah, we live in real society, not some la la land. How to live if we have no money?

That's a tough argument to beat so is it any wonder why people profess to believe in one thing and yet do the exact opposite? What's in the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, the Koran, etc., that is not real life. This is real life.

There's a second flaw. A maxim like that is telling you that problems have no role in creating happiness. Have you ever met anyone who says that without chili padi, food is not nice to eat? (The pedas-ness (hotness) is actually caused by caustic acid killing the cells on your tongue, yet for many people no meal is satisfying without this cellular suicide.)

If it looks trivial, it hardly is. It actually reveals a lot about our psyche and more importantly, why we have so many problems despite the heaps of religious beliefs available.

Consider a scenario where we have no problems at all. Everything is there for us - food, water, shelter. Everyone behaves. Would we sit around quietly then?

I think not. We will start looking for challenges to conquer. Trees to climb. Rivers to cross.

But what if there are no challenges in the landscape? No problem, we'll create them. It can be a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a rocket to go to the moon.

Technically we don't need any of these to survive so they are irrelevant to our existence. But are they?

I think if there is one ingredient for man's well being that many of us miss, it is Vitamin A. "A" for achievement.

We praise a child when she finishes a jigsaw puzzle. We praise a sportsman for being first at the finish line. We crave praise, even if the only ones who would praise us is ourselves. And it seems there can never be enough challenges to produce the achievement and recognition we desire.

It is almost as if as a species, we are programmed to look for trouble or obstacles to overcome. Could it be that overcoming problems, imagined or real, is as important to our survival as food and water? Consider this.

Why do we plant decorative plants at home when we know we have to worry about watering them every day?

Why do we desire property when we know we'll be worrying about loan repayments for the next 20 years?

Why do we desire marriage and kids when we know we'll drag ourselves through hell for the next few decades to earn enough to support the family?

Etc. etc.

Flip that over and the real question stares at us. Which is more desirable: having nothing to worry about or having an achievement to feel good about, even if we have to manufacture a problem to extract that feel-good?

Clearly the latter wins hands down. Maybe we humans are willing to sacrifice anything, our food and water, sometimes even our lives, to possess meaning brought by achievement.

So now, "Happiness is not found in how much you have but how little you need" looks different under that light doesn't it.

Because the truth is, we constantly need to be told of our self worth, not once but many times. In fact I suspect this to be our biggest, most undeclared need, sometimes overshadowing even our need for food and water as hunger strikes prove.

For the same reason, one house is never enough, nor just one child, nor just one business success. From self worth rise the other legs supporting that need like honour, reputation, self-esteem, saving face, and the hundreds of things we get into, pleasant and unpleasant, to nourish those needs. Maybe underneath all that brutal competition for money and fame, this is what "real" life is about?

In many ways, my own life is an antithesis to this "real" life and a live experiment in "happiness is having few needs." As my dear mother always reminds me, why can't I be like normal people - like having a crushing debt, a couple of kids hanging out with bad influence, a stressful job, and a wife that doesn't see eye to eye with her. In a brief flash I saw life through her eyes - how a life devoid of challenge and achievement is a life not worth living. How can you achieve anything if you have few needs? You must have needs. High, ambitious needs. To that I say aye. That is why I am cycling in the opposite direction mum.

Don't worry mum, I'll probably come to my senses in 10 years time.