On Being a Costa Rica Expat Happiness Promoter

Where exactly is happiness located?

Our Declaration of Independence speaks of the “pursuit” of happiness, which is an expression that lends credence to its elusiveness. Happiness must be pursued because it is indeed an elusive and ephemeral emotional state.

A deeply religious person will tell you that happiness is found in God, in your faith and in conforming all your actions to be consistent with what you believe from a religious standpoint. That we stumble onto happiness on the road of religious obedience.

Our secular and highly commercialized society conveys the idea that happiness is found in things, that it resides “out there” in the world and it is your responsibility to go out and accumulate as much of it as you can.

Much of the literature that we read, great novels and poems that move us emotionally, express that happiness is found in romantic love.

But I can tell you from my own experience that true and lasting happiness isn’t really located in any of these places, as I have visited each and experienced just as much misery there as anywhere else.

Happiness is an emotion and in that sense it occupies the small amount of space located squarely between the ears. But if happiness is found in such an obvious and easily accessible location, why does it remain so elusive? Moreover, why are we told in our founding document that it is a thing to be “pursued” when all along we have the capacity to conjure it up simply by applying focused thought?

We talk about happiness being fleeting…that as soon as we have it, it tends to dissipate, dissolve or just disappear.

Why is that?

I submit to you it’s because our general ideas about happiness are all wrong.

If you think about it, the happiest among us are those who tend to be more concerned about the happiness of others than of their own, wouldn’t you agree?

The bottom line is that happiness promoters tend to be happier than happiness pursuers. And I have seen firsthand that this principle also applies to Costa Rica expat happiness promoters. Those who come and immediately get involved in things that promote the health and welfare of others, or of nature, or of the planet always seem to wear a smile on their faces that brightens the day of everyone they meet. Those are the expats you want to be around.

The reason is because the quality, or state, of happiness has a lot to do with our feelings about ourselves. If a person is focused solely on him or herself, it’s very easy to become discouraged and disillusioned. The more laser-like we direct our focus on ourselves, i.e., the more self-interested we are, the more apparent our imperfections, or those related to our circumstances, become.

We begin to realize that we aren’t the perfect specimens of humanity that we may have deluded ourselves into believing that we are. We realize the hard truth that we, or perhaps things, are sort of screwed up.

However, just as soon as we direct that focus to helping others find happiness, all those imperfections disappear, or at least cease to matter all that much. Instead we discover that despite them we do have the capacity to make a difference…to have a positive impact and influence on others.

This chapter offers the suggestion of being a Costa Rica expat happiness promoter by living each day with the goal of enhancing the experience of someone else.

In so doing, you just might find happiness, or a deeper sense of it, yourself.