The Initiative for Happiness

20 young people in Romania have created an NGO whose main purpose is to spread happiness.

România Internațional, 07.07.2013, 13:51

The young people who started this NGO in September 2012 want to help those around find for themselves at least several reasons to be happy. How do they do that? There is a message posted on this organization’s webpage which gives us a hint: “According to a UN report, Romania ranked at the bottom of a happiness barometer in 2012, being Europe’s unhappiest country. The Initiative for Happiness is an association with a mission: to improve the level of happiness in Romania by means of positive and applied psychology principles. In the following minutes, Malina Chirea, one of the founders of this initiative comments on the conclusions of this UN survey.

Malina Chirea: “The hustle and bustle of city life, poverty and unhappiness are only effects, not causes. They are by-products of mentalities and mindsets. If you talk to people in the street, who feel poor and miserable, you can come up with at least two suggestions for them to improve their lives. I strongly believe that every one of us is the builder of his or her own life, but many still share a defeatist mentality, something that was inflicted upon us long before 1989. And that’s why we need to be happy now more than ever. Before 1989, people were taught to keep a low profile and obey the rules. Now, all of a sudden, we’ve got a private environment where one should be able to prove entrepreneurial skills and it’s very difficult to adjust oneself to an environment like that. We only invite people to self-analysis, and don’t come with one-fits-all solutions, because something like that doesn’t exist.”

The Initiative for Happiness has ambassadors in almost all major Romanian cities. They go to high schools and colleges and invite students to workshops and meetings, in which they explain what happiness is all about; talks are focusing on its secrets, how we can get it and more importantly how we can retain it. According to Malina Chirea, happiness could be a means to an end or a goal, depending on the circumstances. However, happiness should be for all of us, something we should consider even more than our daily bread.

Malina Chirea: “I believe that everybody, even unconsciously, is in the pursuit of happiness, as they perceive it. For some it would be a successful career, while others may see it as a big mansion or a family. For others it’s all these combined. People come from different backgrounds and that’s why they see it in their own way, but happiness is a personal state of mind. If our mental world were, let’s say, a house, a building, then happiness would be its foundation.“

But one of the biggest problems facing society in Romania is that young people have been thrown into a world neither their parents nor grandparents were able to predict and that’s why they are unable to be happy nowadays. They have been left without reference values, Malina Chirea says.

Malina Chirea: “The world our parents have prepared us for, no longer exists. Young people find themselves in a world that doesn’t comply with the ideas they have been taught in their first years. So there is a huge gap between them and those who educated them. They feel like finding their own reference values, something they no longer find with their parents or grandparents and they start searching for these values outside. Romania will be entirely changed, when all its people can talk about communism only from history books. We still have to work on that, something, which is visible if you travel around the country. We cannot stay idle and expect things to change on their own. We need to step up this process a little bit, taking some action and initiative for the benefit of civil society. One suchlike initiative is to talk about happiness and about what makes people happy.”

Over 3,000 people have brooded over what makes them happy for almost a year. This aforementioned initiative will soon inaugurate the Institute for Happiness, an area open to all those willing to find an answer to questions about happiness.

Malina Chirea: “We realized that a major component of happiness is the community and the people you have around. You need to have a place where to feel comfortable and be able to read about happiness or other motivational books. We need a place where people can come and feel at home, where they can get support from other people, who are facing the same challenges or find answers to the same questions.”

So, we can say that Bucharest now has its own place where happiness can be found. As of July 1st 2013 this address is 29, Avrig Street. There, people can find answers to important questions and if they are lucky they may find themselves on a collision course with Happiness itself.