Happiness Part 3 – An Eggs-ample

Don’t mind me. I don’t know why I decided to tackle the happiness question with an example about eggs, but here it is… :p

So I have a bit of free time before I go to Navrongo to meet Maggie and go out into the field. I thought it might be a good time to revisit my ideas of happiness and what all of this means. I remember how I was feeling when I wrote my thoughts on happiness, and I think things have settled down in my mind for me to be able to clearly articulate a few things. I remember when I first arrived, and our bus from Accra to Tamale broke down beside a little community with a bunch of kids playing on the side of the road. I remember seeing those kids in their tattered clothes and thinking, wow, look at everything they don’t have – and yet they are still so happy, but how? And therein lies the fallacy of my thoughts – what we should be focusing on is everything they DO have. The thing is though, when you manage to accept how things are, accept what is missing, you realize that what IS there is all that matters.

So since I think in analogies a lot, let me use one here. As an eggs-ample, imagine you are only allowed to cook all of your meals with eggs, and you’ve been given 15 delicious eggs to work with. You have 15 so that you have the freedom to use as many or as little as you want. You’ve always had 15; you don’t always use them all, but they’re always there, just in case. You’ve also been given all the ingredients you could want to add – onions, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, spices, cheese, condiments…you name it! You could have a 4 egg western omelet for breakfast, an eggs benedict eggs-travaganza for lunch, and a delicious scrambled egg with bacon and potatoes for dinner – maybe even make a custard for dessert. so many eggs-cellent choices!

Now imagine one day, you wake up, go to the kitchen to get crackin’, and only 3 eggs are sitting on the counter – no extra ingredients and 12 eggs are missing. You start to look for the other eggs. Your first thought is: “OH NO, What am I going to do!!? I don’t have 15 eggs or any ingredients!! How am I going to cook my meals! Oh the eggs-cruciating agony!” Then, “Forget about a 4 egg breakfast omelet – I only have 3 eggs for everything!” Then, “What about my eggs benedict for lunch!?” And, “What about my egg custard dessert!!? I need 12 more eggs!? How am I going to cook everything I’m used to, with only 3 eggs!? Where are the 12 eggs I had!?”

You start to eggs-perience a feeling of loss. Frittatas with sautéed onions, eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce, egg sandwiches with tomatoes – all down the drain. 1 lousy egg for breakfast, 1 lousy egg for lunch, and 1 lousy egg for dinner  – no custard tonight.

The next day, you again receive only 3 eggs. GREAT. You resign yourself to cooking one, plain egg for each meal. It’s hard because you’re so used to the freedom and choice of 15 eggs, and now you only have 3.

Monday- 3 eggs, Tuesday – 3 eggs, Wednesday – 3 eggs, and on it goes. You realize you will only have 3 eggs and no other ingredients each day for the next 4 months. WHAT THE EGG!?

You spend the first week grumpy, unhappy, uncomfortable. Why can’t you just have the 15 eggs and all the ingredients. Just a scrambled egg with cheddar cheese PLEASE! But it doesn’t matter, because the next day again, you receive 3 eggs.

After a week or two, you realize that wait a minute, maybe 3 eggs isn’t as bad as you first thought. You could still make scrambled eggs, sunny-side up eggs, over easy eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, etc. You start to realize that 12 eggs and all those ingredients weren’t that important, because somehow you’re still happy with just 3 eggs. Why focus on what you don’t have – focus on what you DO have! Maybe that means you never really needed 12 eggs in the first place?  Maybe you never needed all of those ingredients? I mean, you don’t have them, AND you’re surviving – maybe even thriving. How important were they really?

Seeing for yourself that you can enjoy life with only 3 eggs releases you from the bonds of needing 15 eggs and ingredients – from all of the constraints you felt you had on your happiness. Your happiness is not dependent on the number of eggs you have. Your happiness is dependent on those things that sustain you when you have nothing. What gets you through? What gives you strength in the face of adversity? This exercise is all about how to get closer to happiness – you need to see how little you actually need to be happy. And therein lies your true happiness, because the happiness you feel is more than what you’d feel with 15 eggs and all the ingredients in the world.

And I’m not saying that it’s not right to find happiness in 15 eggs – it’s only that people focus too much on not having 15 eggs and how to get those 15.

 

Find out what you need to enjoy your 3 eggs.