The Secret

There’s a best selling book titled “The Secret” out there. I’ve read it. It’s not exactly my favourite book. While I admit it touches on something I believe in, I find it to be a horribly corrupt interpretation of something good.

Let me try to explain….. The good in the book is the power of positive thinking. This is so true. My biggest exception to the book is the value system it uses. Happiness is measured by wealth and success.

My problem with this is success in today’s world is rarely something I respect, and to my eye often brings anything but happiness.

Financial struggles can be the source of a lot of misery, but wealth often seems to be even worse for people. Somewhere along the line they believe they “deserve” it. They “earned” it. They become so full of themselves they become intolerable. Vapid. I never begrudge their success, I cheer for it, but no one deserves the success one can experience in our capitalistic system.

I’ve had ups and downs in life, had success and failure but my happiest days where when I went and worked a hard day in tough conditions with my fellow crew members.

I will never give someone with money more respect than a homeless person I meet. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to lousy people.

I’d suggest to the few people who might care what I think that there is in fact a secret, but it’s not what the bestseller would suggest. My version of the Secret is free. No book, no spin off merchandise. Happiness is found in the things you don’t want to do. Give more than you take. Buy the cheap version of the expensive thing you want. Go do some manual labour. Be happy that someone has more than you. Dream of having less than you have right now.

I know people worth millions, I know people worth nothing; It’s not obvious to me that the wealthy are happier. I can tell you who I’d rather spend my time with.

I’m not a socialist, I think it’s important that everyone take responsibility for their own lives, freedom to trade their time and energy to try to achieve more for their family is important. I just wish that as a society we changed our collective value system. If we could all recognize that happiness actually came from humble sources we just might find it actually holds the key to the imbalance we see in the world.

Both sides of the political spectrum have one thing in common. They value wealth as the most important thing. This is deeply flawed. Redistributing wealth will not solve anything. Do you really think the snotty trust fund kid has a better life or self esteem than any poor kid in a bad neighbourhood has? I’d suggest the rich kid is probably deeply unhappy.

This summer me and my son did a reroof in 30+ degree heat together. It was easily one of the hardest days of work I have ever had in nearly 30 years of manual Construction work. Yet for BOTH of us, I believe it will be one of our happiest days. It’s certainly one of mine. I don’t think we made much money but something about that day made us happy. We did something very difficult together, we earned every penny the hardest of ways.

Could we all be millionaires if we all just believed it to be so? No. It’s not possible. For anyone to be as wealthy as the book portrays there needs to be thousands who have little. That is capitalism, let’s be honest. But who cares? I don’t want a boat, I don’t want a second home. I don’t want most things money can give you.

I’ll never forget one specific day in my life. I was 11 years old. My mum had given us all 10 dollars to buy something for ourselves at a small town hardware store in Big Valley Ab. I had been given a tool box recently, and saw a socket set for 20 dollars. My youngest brother, Caleb, who would’ve been 7, insisted I take his money so I could have what I wanted. I took his money. 33 years later it’s still something that I think of often. I believe that day he went home with nothing, but was deeply happy.

Put it to the test. Is there something you’ve wanted for a long time? Go buy it, and give it to someone that needs it.

Be honest, work hard, give more than you take. That’s the Secret.

If you read this far, thank you.

Tris