Susah tentunya untuk bahagia, kalau kemiskinan menjerat.
Ingat kisah pemulung di Jakarta, yang terpaksa menggendong anaknya yang telah
jadi mayat dari rumah sakit karena tak mampu membayar mobil jenazah? Di kereta
orang menjerit ketakutan dan ia dibawa ke kantor polisi karena dicurigai?
Padahal kesalahannya cuma satu: jadi orang yang miskin.
Anaknya meninggal karena ia terlambat membawa anaknya berobat, juga tak mampu
membiayai perawatan rumah sakit. Bagaimana bisa berobat, wong dia dan anaknya
tinggal di gerobaknya setiap malam, nggak punya rumah.
Salah satu ukuran kesuksesan adalah kecukupan materi. Artinya, cukup untuk
bisa berobat ketika sedang sakit, cukup untuk membeli makanan yang sehat, cukup
untuk biaya pendidikan.
Kalau ada orang yang iklas dalam kemiskinan mungkin sebenarnya bukan iklas,
tapi memang karena tak ada pilihan. Kalau bisa memilih, jelas mereka akan
memilih jadi orang yang berkecukupan. Toh menjadi orang berkecukupan bukan
berarti tak bisa iklas dan taat beribadah.
Kebahagiaan memang relatif karena itu dicari variabel yang bisa diukur:
kesehatan, materi, pendidikan, jaminan hari tua dsb. Tentu saja, tanpa
mengesampingkan faktor spiritual.
Kalau tidak, bagaimana mungkin Anda memvonis seorang miskin bisa bahagia???
Apa ukurannya? Cuma perkataan, "Saya bahagia kok biarpun miskin!" Atau "Biarpun
saya kaya, saya kesepian dan tak bahagia"
Cuma orang tak berdaya yang mengatakan, "Saya bahagia, iklas, dan takwa" dan
pada saat yang bersamaan anaknya perlahan-lahan mati karena ia terlalu miskin
untuk bisa membeli makanan apalagi membawa anaknya berobat.
Janji-janji adanya hidup yang lebih baik setelah kematian menjadi harapan
satu-satunya bagi orang miskin karena hidup di dunia telah sedemikian pahitnya.
Pada titik ini, agama menjadi penawar kepahitan.
Saya berharap bukan "kebahagiaan" seperti ini yang dimiliki orang-orang
Indonesia. Bahagia yang "nrimo" karena memang tak ada pilihan lain.
Saya berharap saya bisa bahagia: berkecukupan secara materi, memiliki
kehidupan fisik dan spiritual yang seimbang.
-US
RM Danardono HADINOTO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Amiiinnn...aminnn..mbak.
Maka itu bangsa kita bangsa bahagia kan? yang kaya diatas (20%)
bahagia, yang miskin dibawah (80%) juga bahagia.
Kemakmuran? untuk apa? kan hanya materi..? gagal hidup, gak sukses
so what lahh..kan gak penting buat kebahagiaan..gak bisa sekolahin
anak, gak tahu mau makan apa, rumah gubuk kebanjiran,ludes semua...
so what lahh? kan hanya materi..gak penting..
salam bahagia
Danardono
--- In [email protected], "Lina Dahlan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> "Mengapa orang mengejar material world (lagunya madonna) kalau tau
> materi itu tidak bisa membawa kebahagiaan?" Gitu kira2 pertanyaan
> Mr. Singer. Mungkin Mr. Singer ini gak pernah merasakan jadi orang
> miskin...:-).
>
> Ini antara uang/materi dengan kebahagiaan. Bagaimana dengan
> kesuksesan? Dimana letaknya 'sukses' tsb? Apakah kebahagiaan
> merupakan salah satu tolok ukur kesuksesan?
>
> Kebahagiaan itu relatif banget yak. Cuma orang yang sering
bersyukur
> dengan ikhlas yang mengerti arti bahagia. Menurut saya sih begitu,
> pak Singer...:-)
>
> wass.,
>
> --- In [email protected], sidqy suyitno <sidqy_suyitno@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away
> > Peter Singer
> >
> > Would you be happier if you were richer? Many people believe
> that they would be. But research conducted over many years
suggests
> that greater wealth implies greater happiness only at quite low
> levels of income. People in the United States, for example, are,
on
> average, richer than New Zealanders, but they are not happier.
More
> dramatically, people in Austria, France, Japan, and Germany appear
> to be no happier than people in much poorer countries, like
Brazil,
> Colombia, and the Philippines.
> > Comparisons between countries with different cultures are
> difficult, but the same effect appears within countries, except at
> very low income levels, such as below $12,000 annually for the US.
> Beyond that point, an increase in income doesn't make a lot of
> difference to people's happiness. Americans are richer than they
> were in the 1950's, but they are not happier. Americans in the
> middle-income range today that is, a family income of $50,000-
> $90,000 have a level of happiness that is almost identical to
well-
> off Americans, with a family income of more than $90,000.
> > Most surveys of happiness simply ask people how satisfied they
> are with their lives. We cannot place great confidence in such
> studies, because this kind of overall "life satisfaction" judgment
> may not reflect how much people really enjoy the way they spend
> their time.
> > My Princeton University colleague Daniel Kahneman and several
co-
> researchers tried to measure people's subjective well-being by
> asking them about their mood at frequent intervals during a day.
In
> an article published in Science on June 30, they report that their
> data confirm that there is little correlation between income and
> happiness. On the contrary, Kahneman and his colleagues found that
> people with higher incomes spent more time in activities that are
> associated with negative feelings, such as tension and stress.
> Instead of having more time for leisure, they spent more time at
and
> commuting to work. They were more often in moods that they
described
> as hostile, angry, anxious, and tense.
> > Of course, there is nothing new in the idea that money does
not
> buy happiness. Many religions instruct us that attachment to
> material possessions makes us unhappy. The Beatles reminded us
that
> money can't buy us love. Even Adam Smith, who told us that it is
not
> from the butcher's benevolence that we get our dinner, but from
his
> regard for his self-interest, described the imagined pleasures of
> wealth as "a deception" (though one that "rouses and keeps in
> continual motion the industry of mankind").
> > Nevertheless, there is something paradoxical about this. Why
do
> governments all focus on increasing per capita national income?
Why
> do so many of us strive to obtain more money, if it won't make us
> happier?
> > Perhaps the answer lies in our nature as purposive beings. We
> evolved from beings who had to work hard to feed themselves, find
a
> mate, and raise children. For nomadic societies, there was no
point
> in owning anything that one could not carry, but once humans
settled
> down and developed a system of money, that limit to acquisition
> disappeared.
> > Accumulating money up to a certain amount provides a safeguard
> against lean times, but today it has become an end in itself, a
way
> of measuring one's status or success, and a goal to fall back on
> when we can think of no other reason for doing anything, but would
> be bored doing nothing. Making money gives us something to do that
> feels worthwhile, as long as we do not reflect too much on why we
> are doing it.
> > Consider, in this light, the life of the American investor
> Warren Buffett. For 50 years, Buffett, now 75, has worked at
> accumulating a vast fortune. According to Forbes magazine , he is
> the second wealthiest person in the world, after Bill Gates, with
> assets of $42 billion. Yet his frugal lifestyle shows that he does
> not particularly enjoy spending large amounts of money. Even if
his
> tastes were more lavish, he would be hard-pressed to spend more
than
> a tiny fraction of his wealth.
> > From this perspective, once Buffett earned his first few
> millions in the 1960's, his efforts to accumulate more money can
> easily seem completely pointless. Is Buffett a victim of
> the "deception" that Adam Smith described, and that Kahneman and
his
> colleagues have studied in more depth?
> > Coincidentally, Kahneman's article appeared the same week that
> Buffett announced the largest philanthropic donation in US
history
> $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and another
$7
> billion to other charitable foundations. Even when the donations
> made by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are adjusted for
> inflation, Buffett's is greater.
> > At a single stroke, Buffett has given purpose to his life.
Since
> he is an agnostic, his gift is not motivated by any belief that it
> will benefit him in an afterlife. What, then, does Buffett's life
> tell us about the nature of happiness?
> > Perhaps, as Kahneman's research would lead us to expect,
Buffett
> spent less of his life in a positive mood than he would have if,
at
> some point in the 1960's, he had quit working, lived on his
assets,
> and played a lot more bridge. But, in that case, he surely would
not
> have experienced the satisfaction that he can now rightly feel at
> the thought that his hard work and remarkable investment skills
> will, through the Gates Foundation, help to cure diseases that
cause
> death and disability to billions of the world's poorest people.
> Buffett reminds us that there is more to happiness than being in a
> good mood.
> > ** Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton
> University and the author, with Jim Mason, of The Way We Eat: Why
> Our Food Choices Matter.
> > Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006. http://www.project-
> syndicate.org/commentary/singer13
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
---------------------------------
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Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
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