How to Be Happy When Life Sucks

Life has ups and downs. Worrying only makes things worse.

Sometimes our whole world is shaken so much that all our big problems seem ridiculous. We know from that very moment that we will never be the same person.

I had a too-early life lesson about what a real problem must look like.

Alicante (Spain). Thursday, 14th December 1995

Jamie woke up from his nap very agitated, he was scared. He burst out crying into the living room where his parents Coral and Joseph were. — Mummy, daddy, I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die with grandpa, there are no toys in Heaven!

His parents were shocked. What was wrong with their child? He had been talking about death for a whole week. Was it the result of his first Halloween party? This new American tradition is too scary for kids.

Yes. Definitely, a conversation with his teacher is due. What the hell are they teaching him these days in kindergarten? He is only 5!

They spent the rest of the afternoon cheering him up and entertaining him. Easy with a child and all the excitement of Christmas just around the corner.

— You are not going to die, honey, not for a long time. But when you do, and when mum and dad do, we’ll be happy in Heaven, a place of joy where you’ll have all the toys you wish for, and some more.

— Why don’t we prepare for your Christmas function? You will be the cutest sheep of the living nativity at the Kindergarten!

Friday, 15th December 1995

Alicante, 9.00 am

Breakfast. A phone call from Madrid. Joseph’s father just died. He informs Coral and they look at each other with shock. Was Jamie’s dream a premonition on his grandad’s death?

The family machine starts running. Phone calls, preparations, packing. It’s 1995, there are no cell phones, you have to do all your calls before you leave the house.

The children are just 8 and 5 years old, they cannot make them travel 500km (310miles) and back just for a funeral. It is decided, Coral and the kids will stay home; Joseph will take the bus to the nearest city, Murcia, where his brother John lives. They’ll share the car.

Coral takes Jamie to Kindergarten. The teacher reacts with shock about his obsession with death over the week. Of course, they are not talking about death with tiny children.

Murcia, 9.00 am

Breakfast. A phone call from Madrid. John’s father just died. My grandpa.

I wasn’t at home at that time. My high school started early in the morning.

Arrangements are done. Uncle Joseph is coming to Murcia to share the car to Madrid. They decide that I’m old enough to come with them.

I’m called out of the classroom, the teacher only says “Your mother called, it’s your grandfather”. I wasn’t surprised, it was a matter of time. I get my things and tell a couple of classmates that I’m probably leaving for a funeral.

This might be shocking for some readers, but in Spain, we bury our relatives the next day after they die.

Saturday, 16th December 1995

Alicante

Coral spent the day with the children. In the afternoon, they went to the hypermarket to buy some groceries. Have you ever gone to a hypermarket with two children?

My auntie was exhausted. Albert, her eldest son, was going to have dinner in the pizza place next door with his best friend and family, she would watch a movie with little Jamie.

The neighbor came to pick up Albert. And Jamie wanted to join them. — Please mum, pleaseeeee, I want to go, tooooo!!!

She wasn’t happy. She didn’t like to lose sight of him. A 5-year-old demands a lot of effort and attention. The neighbor insisted. The pizza place was just in front of their building, what could go wrong?

She accepted, it would buy her some time to organize the shopping.

That was the last time she saw him alive.

Madrid

We buried grandpa in the local cemetery in the morning, and went to grandma’s home to spend the evening in family.

At 9.00 pm the telephone rang in the living room.

Screams, tears, nervousness. I was with my cousins in the kitchen, we were scared. I didn’t know what was happening, but I had the instinct to make liters of linden tea.

After a lovely pizza dinner where Jamie behaved very well, they were walking back home. They waited patiently for the red man to turn green to cross the road.

A car was going double the speed limit, the driver saw the light change to red and sped up to skip the traffic light. He had no intention of stopping.

And then he saw the child crossing.

He hit the brakes 10 meters before. Half of the rubber of his wheels remained tattooed on the road for days.

It wasn’t enough.

It was his second accident in six months, in exactly the same spot. Although last time there was nobody around.

Sunday, 17th December 1995

ICU Alicante 4:00 am

We arrived in the hospital after a frantic drive to get Uncle Joseph to his child. I was sharing the back of the car with him. I didn’t want to cry, I must not cry in front of him, I have to be strong for him.

But I wasn’t very good at it. He held my hand for 4 hours in that car. Even at that moment, he was selflessly taking care of me.

Nobody was mourning grandpa, we could only think of little Jamie.

He was artificially alive, waiting for the parents' approval to let his body go. I will never forget the asphyxiating atmosphere, my devastated auntie, the pain and guilt in the neighbors’ eyes.

We buried grandpa on Saturday, and little Jamie was gone some hours later.

We lost the eldest and youngest member of our tribe in 24hrs. Uncle Joseph lost his father and youngest son in just one day.

Christmas was in 1 week. Merry Christmas, Ballesteros family.

Monday. Back to high school.

I left on Friday to attend grandpa’s funeral. Some schoolmates approached me with their condolences, and my head was fuzzy.

— I’m sorry for your loss, how old was he? — Five years old — Your grandpa was 5??? — What grandpa?

It had been too much to digest.

In my head, grandpa’s had died ages ago. I only had space for the sudden death of my five years old cousin, and all the hospital drama.

If only we listened to children some more. I would have called him, I would have asked him how heaven looked like in his dream.

Was he too young to understand that his elder cousins loved him deeply in spite of teasing him? Yes, Jamie, you were our little toy, sometimes we played to annoy you. We were children, too.

You were right, you were going to die with grandpa, and nobody believed you. How could we? I hope he took good care of you.

And I hope you were mistaken about toys in heaven. I hope you got tons of them.

There Is a Lesson to Learn After Every Loss

I stopped being 15 that day. I became cynical. If a friend came to me crying because her crush ignored her, I would answer that everything would be fine.

But I didn’t mean it, I was lacking empathy. On my mind my answer was very different: FFS woman, compose yourself, what is a crush when life is so ephemeral?

Of course, when you compare anything to death, or even worse, a sudden child’s death, all our worries tend to be nothing. How can we complain if we are still alive?

Fortunately, that stage didn’t last forever. But little Jamie left me with two crucial life-lesson at a very young age:

1. We have to enjoy every minute of life because we don’t know when the game will be over.
2. Life is about small things. There are tiny little pleasures and minor little problems. You know your life is going well when you worry about unimportant things.

The joy of the little complaints

It became my mantra. My life philosophy changed. I knew my life would be perfect when I started complaining about little things, so it became a little joke.

I remember once when I was desperate to find a job. I was spending a weekend at my friend’s when I heard myself saying, — I’m looking forward to complaining about Mondays.

She laughed, not fully understanding. And I explained my theory:

— If I wish for a job, it will be something new and exciting when I get it.

— I don’t want that.

— I want to take it for granted, so I feel entitled to say on a Sunday “S**t, tomorrow is Monday!” with a sad face. I want to complain about how much I hate my boss.

Yes, your job might suck. But you don’t know how much joy a 50 year-old-man-unemployed-for-more-than-a-year would feel to have it.

And I bet the brilliant Stephen Hawking would have given an arm just for one day of being in the shoes of that desperate unemployed 50 years old man. To be able to hold a glass, walk on his legs, hug his children.

Your personal hell is heaven for others.

That mind shift made me happier than I ever expected. Little Jamie gave me the freedom to compare myself with others in worse situations or even with myself in worse times.

No matter how bad my current situation was, I always won.

An Asian friend told me once. “You westerns are always depressed because you compare yourselves with successful, beautiful, wealthy people. We compare ourselves with those that are worse than us; that’s why we can smile even not having so many material possessions.”

I didn’t know there was scientific research about it. I found a great article today by Michael Easter where he explains it in great detail.

Economic Crises Remind Us How Well Off We Were Before.

Back in 2010, I was working in Uruguay with people living in the worst conditions a human being can be. Houses were made of cardboard or corrugated metal sheets. No running water. No proper streets. No shoes. Rats were running around while children played on mountains of garbage.

Families would share a tiny room where they would live in the day, cook, and sleep in the night with their animals, so nobody stole them.

I came to Spain for a visit, and a red-cross volunteer was asking for donations to Africa in the subway. The average answer was: “how (dare) do you ask for help for others? Haven’t you seen us? we are the ones needing help!”

I understand the context, people were desperate after the recession and the crisis, but I remember exchanging some words with the volunteer. We both agreed that a crisis in Spain is like a bad vacation in Las Vegas for most of the world.

Yes, I said MOST of the world. Europe is the smallest continent in a vast world full of problems.

A Final Lesson I Still Had to Learn: The Power of Gratitude

The game of changing the perspective when I have a problem gave me freedom and happiness. But I still had to learn one more thing: to stop comparing myself with bad situations.

Or even better. To stop all sorts of comparisons.

Comparisons are awful. Even when you are winning, there is always this bitter taste of I feel good because it could be worse.

Then I learned the true power of gratitude. We don’t need to do any comparison, we just need to truly appreciate our gifts.

I had laser eye surgery when I was 26. I got 100% vision after 15 years of myopia.

The next day I spent 5 min staring at the alarm clock in bed and 30 min reading the shampoo letters in my morning shower.

I hadn’t noticed how blurry they were before.

It’s been 14 years since that day, and every single day I stop for a moment to appreciate the gift of seeing. I don’t take it for granted. I had a blind friend in my school; I know how precious our vision is. I give thanks for it every day.

Years later, I started learning about Buddhism, and funny enough, that is exactly what they preach.

Everything we have or are is impermanent. We have to enjoy our present, our here and now.

We have more gifts than we can possibly imagine.

Let Your Inner Leader Shine

There is a reason for the famous saying, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone”. It seems that we need a disaster in our lives to put things into perspective. That’s what the Japanese call learning through Kensho.

But there’s a kind way to learn life lessons. We can learn through insights, or what they call Satori. We can change our mindset by learning from the wisdom and experience of others.

This article is an invitation to start appreciating what we have instead of waiting for the day that it’s gone.

The worst thing that might happen is death. And death is as natural as birth. Fear of death condemns us to live in a permanent state of fear, for something inevitable. How about we accept it and live a happy life?

I invite you to make a list of all the gifts you have in your life. Imagine how your life would be if you lost any of them. Be honestly grateful for them, don't take life for granted, enjoy it, live it to the fullest.

We won’t be here forever. Everything is in a permanent change. Enjoy life as it comes; focus on your gifts instead of your problems. One of the most important qualities in great leaders is gratitude.

To be great, we need to practice gratitude. Only then will we achieve real happiness.

Thank you for such a beautiful present, little Jamie. See you soon in the next life.

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