'Masaya'

LAST Wednesday, I wrote about how the local and international press have often written up stories claiming we're the happiest people in Asia, if not the world, based on their misinterpretation of "happiness surveys" conducted in different countries. This year alone, Time Asia and the Sept. 4 issue of the widely circulated Chinese weekly Yazhou Zhoukan (Asiaweek) featured "happy Filipinos" as theme stories, again based on these surveys.

Yet, the Social Weather Stations poll group that conducted the local surveys on happiness says we actually scored only about average, ranking 31st among the 65 countries surveyed. So what is it that gets the world, and we Filipinos, wanting to believe we are the happiest people on the planet?

Happy pessimism?

I bought my copy of Yazhou Zhoukan in Singapore so Filipino happiness was uppermost on my mind the past few days, including an anticipation of returning back to a happy Philippines. But when I got into a taxi at the airport,
little did I know that I was going to have to endure an hour of whining from the taxi driver: about gasoline prices, traffic, the rains, value-added tax, a bad cough.

The driver was not atypical. We all whine constantly (I sometimes think we've even reached the point where we enjoy bad news). The Germans have a term, "schadenfreude," to mean, loosely, the good feeling you get when something bad happens to others. I think we should coin a word for the good feeling we get whenever something bad happens to us. (Or do we already have one in English: masochism?)

Skilty Labastilla, a masteral student at the Ateneo de Manila University, contributed a Youngblood column last Monday with the title "Pessimistic but happy," suggesting that perhaps the Filipino survives because we anticipate the worst. I guess that's one way of putting it.

But the "happiness" portion remains elusive. Let's return to my taxi driver. Adding to the agony of the trip, as he went through his long litany of trials and tribulations, the radio was blaring out "masaya" but sticky tunes like "Chicken Dance," which still, well, dance in my head right now. From time to time, Mr. Taxi Driver sang along, complete with chickens clucking, which provided me with some comic relief from his complaining. So, indeed, here was a man who was apparently not very happy with his life, but who was obviously "masaya."

Merriment

The Social Weather Stations (SWS) surveys on happiness actually ask people to rate themselves as "talagang masaya" (very happy), "medyo masaya" (fairly happy), "hindi masyadong masaya" (not very happy) and "talagang hindi masaya" (not at all happy). (The English terms are from the SWS.)

"Masaya" is the word used here, and certainly, it's the closest we can get to the English word "happy." But when you think hard about it, "masaya" isn't exactly the same as happiness. Jose Panganiban's classic Diksyunaryo Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles defines "masaya" as "Merry, gay. Cheerful."

I will agree then, we are a "masaya" people. This is the face the world sees among the eight million Filipinos living overseas. Just think of the hundreds of Filipina domestic helpers congregating in shopping centers and plazas in Hong Kong and Singapore. They look "masaya."

Foreigners who visit us also leave with the impression that we are a merry people, from the hustle and bustle of our streets, from our fiestas, even from our wakes with all the carousing and eating and card games.

The wakes provide us with a clue to the Filipino "happiness." Skilty's description of Filipino pessimism is one of an anticipatory coping mechanism. Because we expect the worst, we are "happy" with whatever happens. I'd suggest our "happiness" (in the sense of "masaya") is itself a coping mechanism. We joke, we laugh, albeit nervously, in times of crisis to assure ourselves all will be well.
But is all that being happy or being "masaya"? There are real differences between "happiness" and "saya." Note how we can be happy alone, but not "masaya." "Saya" is generated, and celebrated, collectively. "'Saya' is being entertaining, and entertained, all in exuberance.

But there's a downside to all this "saya." I feel "saya" is the product of a society where so much is uncertain. "Masaya" therefore celebrates the moment; it is fleeting, a burst of emotion best captured by that feeling we have when a loved one returns home after a long absence.

On the other hand, the English "happiness" generally means satisfaction with life, almost an individual peace with self. Happiness lingers on; to be happy is to say one envisions a full life in the next few years. Happiness then is the feeling one has when a loved one returns home, and you know he or she won't need to leave again for a long time.

'Saya' and happy

We are a "masaya" people, sometimes to a fault. Even in the worst of times, we will insist on throwing parties, on splurging the little we have left. As "masaya" goes, we live for the moment.

Note that there's a gendered aspect to this. The Yazhou Zhoukan magazine had two photographs in its lead article about happy Filipinos: one of a group of men drinking while floodwaters swirled around them, and another of musicians performing with a large crowd of onlookers. Both photographs were striking in that almost everyone in the photos was male.

We -- Filipinos and non-Filipinos -- do tend to forget that our merry-making often involves self-indulgent males. The Yazhou Zhoukan photograph of the drinking men doesn't show the women; they were probably at home preparing the food. They were probably the ones, too, who shelled out the money for their jobless husbands.

Male "saya" is more often self-centered; even when done with a group, as when treating the "barkada" [group of buddies] to a drinking spree, it is to assert one's status. The Filipina, on the other hand, derives her "saya" from seeing her husband or her children happy (and not just "saya").

(I'm generalizing here about the Filipina. I was just thinking of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's "masayang" proclamation, after the congressional circus, that we have just witnessed a "glorious day" in Philippine history. Note here another possible use of "masaya": One could tell the President, "Masaya ka!" -- a way of indicting her schadenfreude, her gloating over the nation's misery.)

I digress. Gloria moments aside, we need to find a way to integrate "saya" and happiness. Certainly, there is much to admire in our ability to be merry amid adversity, in being able to infect others with our good cheer so we can all better weather our many crises. But we need to recognize, too, how ephemeral "saya" can be; eventually, we need to buckle down and get things done, even if it means less merriment.

"Saya" is making the best out of the worst, for the moment. But we need to extend this sense of "saya" to being able to think, "Our country, our children, deserve more." "Saya" should be one of the means toward a goal of happiness, rather than just a coping, almost masochistic, mechanism to deceive ourselves into believing we are a happy people.