Finding Happiness in Unexpected Places: Feeding Children!
Do you every find yourself wondering what it really means to be happy? Maybe you have a job, a car, a spouse, a bank account, some great kids and friends. And yet you wake up more often than not, sensing that something is just...missing.
While running my own construction business in Wisconsin for over two decades, I really didn’t think much about happiness. I rose at 5:00 every morning in the dark of frozen winters and drove for hours in the humid heat of summer. I thought mostly about work - getting more of it, doing a good job, satisfying customers, earning money.
I had fun and lived a good life, and it seemed that everyone else around me felt the same way - but life was mostly about work with some happy times thrown in to make things tolerable.
And then a strange thing happened. A year ago I moved to a village on Lake Chapala in Central Mexico and my whole life changed. I found myself living amongst people whose happiness was not dependent on their work, their income or their status.
They were happy because they enjoyed life and family and community. They were happy to walk along the lake with strollers and grandparents, eating peanuts and ice cream. They were just plain happy.
To watch people enjoy life so completely wasn’t that unusual, but to see it in people who have almost nothing in the way of material possessions was a surprise. I found myself people-watching down by the lake on Sundays, envious of the laughter from large families spread out on the grass cooking tortillas and beans over a tiny flame. I envied the size of the families, the shared meals, their ability to experience joy simply because they were alive, and together. I felt like a kind of happiness voyeur.
It took me a while to see past the shiny surface of this cultural happiness into the darker corners of village life.
At first I didn’t see the children who sat at home without dinner, or the old woman who went to bed hungry. That came later, after the honeymoon phase of my arrival in Mexico began to fade and the reality of things sank in.
I’ve always had a philanthropic bent but I was often too busy to do much about it back in the US. I found ways to help that didn't conflict with my busy work schedule; I donated money to charity, helped a neighbor in need, packed bags for the Goodwill truck. Most importantly, I was a big brother for a special youngster named Josh, who recently graduated from high school. Now that I live here in Mexico, I don't have the constraints I had before. I have more time, and with that time, comes opportunity.
A neighbor of mine, Tom Music, runs a local feeding kitchen for children and families called Operation Compassion Ajijic. One day I stopped by to check it out and say hi. Hunger isn’t pretty, but seeing hungry kids eating is beautiful. Seeing the smiles on those kids faces as they ate soup and beans changed me. The kitchen serves from 20-70 people on any given day (except Sundays). At first I just gave some money to my neighbor to help out, but then I started riding my bike to the kitchen with my camera and filming the kids so I could play the video back for them. It wasn’t long after that I found myself at the local carniceria buying a few kilos of beef for the soup after seeing a giant pot of buttered spaghetti noodles being served up as dinner.
The next thing I knew I was taking a ride along with my neighbor to deliver meals to the truly needy - the home-bound elderly - and that’s when something shifted way down deep inside of me. That’s when I came to life again. That’s when I remembered what really matters. And that’s when I realized I was happy.
I don’t know exactly when or how it happened, but in this village I’m happy in a way I never was before. There are other things going on in my life that have contributed to this newfound sense of happiness, but it’s the laughter of the children that makes me smile most often.