Can We Venezuelans Be Happy?

Some will think that at this point in our history it is impossible to answer this question with a yes. And yet we have seen happiness in others, and we have felt it ourselves, living here and overcoming the thousands of difficulties that come our way every day.

The factor of faith, of seeing things with a supernatural outlook, is without doubt very important. But for those who do not approach things from that point of view, there are also psychological explanations of how one can feel happiness in the midst of difficulties.

The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl is an expert on this subject. He survived a concentration camp, and in his book Man’s Search for Meaning he tells us how to rise above our circumstances and be happy, even in the worst of them. If you read Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, you will find a chapter about the satisfaction and happiness produced by the things that cost us the most. There are also authors who specialize in showing that stress, when faced positively (especially when we are helping others), can actually lengthen our lives.

For us Venezuelans, everything we set out to do takes enormous effort, starting with getting up at four in the morning, dropping the children off at school on time, not losing our minds in traffic, getting to work on time, withdrawing cash from a bank, getting an ID card or a passport, and so on. Not to mention how hard it is to pay the rent, the school fees and the food, and above all to make it home alive and kicking, without having been robbed, kidnapped or…

But tell me, isn’t it lovely to go to bed “squeezed dry like a lemon” after fighting all day to move our family and our country forward? Tell me, can anything compare with the pleasure you feel when you manage to achieve the tiniest thing imaginable?

Another point Seligman makes in his book is how important a positive attitude toward life is for being happy. We all know how optimistic and good-humored Venezuelans are. Some people make fun of it, but it is undoubtedly a point in our favor. It helps us get through one or several difficult moments a day, thanks to the incredible remarks you can hear in any line, where people sometimes say such crazy things that they bring a big smile to our faces.

Something else that matters a great deal is that Venezuelans are people of hope. Whenever we start talking about the negative things with someone on the street, or anywhere else, we always end up saying: “God willing, this will get fixed!” And so we go on, living day by day without letting sadness knock us down, even when we have every reason for it.

Family is another factor that works very much in our favor. I don’t know if there is any other country in the world like ours in this respect. The other day a taxi driver, who didn’t stop talking for a single minute from the moment I got into his car, told me all about his children. He told me with great pride that they were professionals, graduates of our excellent universities; that he was raising a grandson (the child of his daughter, who had him as a teenager) and that this boy was the apple of his eye and “they gave him a medal at school.” He told me he lived with his mother, and that what she longed for more than anything was to gather the whole family together.

Well, that is how the great majority of us Venezuelans are: positive and happy, in spite of everything. Because something else we have in this country (which Seligman also touches on in a chapter of Authentic Happiness) is a great deal of Faith, and that is why we have Hope that, with so much Praying and Working, sooner or later we will be a great country.

I have always said that whoever knows they are a child of God, and lives for others rather than for themselves, will always be happy, wherever they live!