Pursuit of Happiness

I asked someone the other day, "Are you happy?" My question was related to a new system we've been working on at work.

he explained that he grew up poor, and his family in Afghanistan sometimes lived on one meal a day, the meal being bread and tea. Now that he has money, he feels insecure because NGO workers are often targeted as they are assumed to be rich in this society. He worries about his family's safety, and sometimes can not sleep thinking where they will go if they can't live here. He ended by saying that he does not know how to answer when someone asks him if he's happy, because he contstantly lives in a state of uncertainty and fear.

This really shocked me, because he looks like a happy-go-lucky person from my encounters. I bitch and complain a lot, but I'm generally a very happy person, and I merrily go about my life dreaming about the Hacienda I'm going to live in 10 years from now in Buenos Aires. But it is an adustment to live among people who have been displaced and disillusioned again and again, and thus do not have dreams anymore. There's a driver who was a shoemaker driven out of business by flood of cheap chinese shoes, and he was a refugee in Peshawar. My cook matter-of-factly mentioned that his brother lives home after both of his legs being blown up by landmines. And yet this people smile at you and goes on with their lives.

I read somewhere that human beings have a defense mechanism built into the brain so that they can not comprehend enormous misery. It is to allow us to carry on with our daily lives, move on and hope for something better to happen. I wonder where the hopes and dreams went for these people.