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Search for neighborhood smell shows selflessness can bring joy
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IT was chilly and windy on Monday night. Like everyone else in our neighborhood shuttle bus, I darted toward home to keep warm as soon as the bus stopped at the gate of our suburban neighborhood in Qingpu District, western Shanghai.
On my way home, however, I smelled a strong odor in the air, apparently emitted from some plants nearby.
After I went home, I opened the windows to smell again, and the foul air kept stinging and stifling.
I did two things: I called the municipal hotline 12345, but it could only relate the pollution accident to local authorities the next day. No immediate help was available. Then I discussed the foul air with my neighbors in our instant message platform. They suggested I dial 990, an influential radio talk program, the next morning, for media support. Again, it was of no immediate use. When I asked my neighbors what we could do together NOW, the answer was silence. After all, it was cold and late at night.
I knew the limit of power of an individual, or several individuals, in the face of recurring pollution that has come to define most Chinese cities. But I decided to give myself a chance to try. I drove out of our neighborhood to look for pollution sources.
Already a bit under the weather, I opened my car windows to smell, letting the chilly wind slap my face.
Soon I found two suspicious places near our neighborhood and memorized their exact addresses. I was not sure whether these two places, where some small factories clustered, were the true sources of pollution, but bad odor was indeed strongest in their vicinity.
I was disappointed that I had no way to contact local authorities at 9:30pm when I thought I’d probably located the sources of pollution. The municipal hotline 12345 had told me that there was no such 24-hour hotline on pollution.
So at 9:30pm on Monday night, I decided I would complain about two things to local environmental protection authorities the next day: One, solve the pollution problem immediately, now that I have probably found the sources. Two, set up a 24-hour hotline so that we can call for help at night.
So I did. But the moment I talked to a gentleman from the local environmental protection bureau, I was not as unhappy as the night before.
The gentleman, a certain Mr Feng, was very enthusiastic and agreed to go and investigate on the spot as soon as possible. And he told me there was actually a local hotline — 69714110 —for the public to call for help in case of emergent pollution. He said they respond much more quickly to a call on this hotline than to a notice from the general municipal hotline 12345.
In this episode, I realized two things: First, the government was imperfect in many areas, but good-will communication could solve many problems. It served no good just to complain. Second, volunteering to do something for the benefit of our whole neighborhood really made me happy.
‘Time affluence’
Which brings me to the book, “Happy Money,” written by Elizabeth Dunn, who teaches psychology at the University of British Columbia, and Michael Norton, who teaches marketing at the Harvard Business School.
“Taking the time to help others makes people feel effective... and these feelings of competence lead volunteers to feel less overwhelmed by the multitude of tasks in their everyday lives,” say the authors.
“There is almost no evidence that buying a home — or a newer, nicer home — increases happiness,” they say. In their view, “time affluence” contributes significantly to one’s sense of well-being, and giving away some of one’s time doing volunteer work will make one subconsciously conclude that one must have plenty of time.
Like most other Western books on money and happiness, this one enshrines the principle of helping and investing in others as the ultimate source of happiness. It cites many examples such as Home Depot, which encourages its employees to give time and expertise to Habitat for Humanity.
But an answer to the fundamental question remains elusive: Why does helping others make one really happy?
Fundamentally speaking, this question has no ultimate answer in a world in which the self, or the individual, is enshrined, however unselfish the self is.
‘Pure joy’
The other day I bought a book written by Karen Armstrong, entitled “Buddha,” and I found an answer in it.
“There is a deep affinity between the earth and the selfless human being, something that Gotama had sensed when he recalled his trance under the rose-apple tree,” observes the author.
What was Siddhatta Gotama’s trance when he was a boy?
The author explains: “In one version of the story, we are told that when he looked at the field that was being ploughed, he noticed that the young grass had been torn up and that insects and the eggs they had laid in these new shoots had been destroyed. The little boy gazed at the carnage and felt a strange sorrow, as though it were his own relatives that had been killed. But it was a beautiful day, and a feeling of pure joy rose up unbidden in his heart.”
What was that “pure joy?”
Says the author: “The child had been taken out of himself by a moment of spontaneous compassion, when he had allowed the pain of creatures that had nothing to do with him personally to pierce him to the heart. The surge of selfless empathy had brought him a moment of spiritual release.”
Well, don’t mistake Buddha as a religious figure, for he is not. And I have yet to feel his “spiritual release” in my volunteer work on Monday night and things like that. But now I know why we can “lose” our “self” and be happy.
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