View Point                                                                         Abid Ullah Jan

The Illusive Pursuit of Comfort Zone

Private production plays on Pakistan Television have further glamourised living in Western countries to the extent that every migration from Pakistan, irrespective of associated circumstances, is viewed as an opening to new miracles of happiness and ingenuity in a comfort zone. Such misconceptions are not due to commonly perceived physical poverty in our homeland. This is rather a clear manifestation of our spiritual poverty.

Intellectual navigation of the vast West has become harder today than in the days of our forefathers. That's because it has become a place where time shrinks for reflection, where rich immigrants - and the poor ones who serve them - limit themselves to earning dollars and turning small blue-collar neighbourhoods into upscale resorts, and where everyone vie for material well being for yet to find mental comfort and satisfaction.
What makes the West so attractive? Is it democracy, freedom, capitalism, or the opportunity to make more money and live happily?

In the language of social scientists, it is due to the shift from the "natural" values of immigrants, who have grown up worried about real survival needs such as hunger, to the "materialist" values of native Westerners who have grown up with their survival needs taken for granted. Our passion for personal safety expands to include new necessities like air bags, clean water, and even saving the ozone layer. As our lives become more saturated with science and technology, our faith in them to provide meaning is diminished. Belief in religion (which represent outside authority) sharply drops and spiritual poverty deepens.

Pakistanis living abroad tend to be richer or better-educated or have more prestigious occupations than most people at home, but a majority is not happier. Far from being a paradox, this is central to human nature. Moreover, they have such demanding standards for the material aspects of life that they are less satisfied than the so-considered disadvantaged Pakistanis living back home.

Books such as The Way to Happiness and Do You Want to be Happier are on the rise for no reason other than being part of the struggle to end rollercoaster ride of life in the West. Some of the common phrases that one hears after a few minutes discussion with most expatriates on this topic are: I earned more money, got a fast car, all the things that I thought would make me happy... and they didn't; I am 'successful', but... still the same, nothing changed; I developed a positive attitude, I meditated.... did group work... prayed... visualized... nothing; Overall... nothing!

Well by the standards of most Pakistanis in Pakistan, Western countries is a comfort zone - this is paradise, if anyone is not happy here, where?! On part of the expatriates, no one seem to think back and remember that a few years back he was not happy and was thinking: "If I could just get a visa, permanent resident status and a good job in Europe or America, live there, go to the beach, paradise, THEN I'll be happy!" In fact, it is not that 'out there' that makes one happy. It is the inner soul that keeps or takes one out of a comfort zone.

If we look a bit deeper, it is not difficult to observe that there is a great deal of dualism of "the I" and "the other" in the seemingly monistic materialism that operates the Western value system. Western man utilises, whereas the peoples of Asia and Africa are to be utilised. In the old world order, this dualistic outlook expressed itself through the explicit discourse of racism and racial inequality. The old imperialist system tried to enslave the peoples of Asia and Africa, suppressing revolutionary movements to secure cheap labour and raw materials and to safeguard a lebensraum for strategic and economic expansion.

Today, before anything else, immigrants from East fall victim to consumerism -- a pattern of behaviour that impoverishes the soul on the inside, and helps to destroy our environment, personal financial health, the common good of individuals and human institutions on the outside. There are growing forces making this way of life almost impossible to attain or maintain, even for the wealthy.

The line between want and need disappears for most immigrants. Either they work their tails off for making more and more money or get involved in purchasing of new goods and services, with little attention to their true need, durability, product origin and other consequences. Freedom from religion is followed by unlimited advertising designed to create both a desire to follow trends, and the resultant personal self-reward system based on acquisition. Materialism - the impoverishment of soul - is one of the end results of consumerism.

The normal common sense desire for an adequate supply of life's necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships is replaced with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. Everything becomes mediated through the spending of money on goods and services. An overabundance of things lessens the value of what people possess.

The powerful forces of materialism set each person against himself in an endless quest for the attainment of material things. Weight training, diet centres, tummy tucks, breast reduction or enhancement, permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen injections, these are some examples of people turning themselves into spiritually-impoverished human consumer goods more suited for the "marketplace" than living in a healthy balanced society.

It is very sad to observe that we have lost our sense to understand the dichotomy between living in the West and happiness. No matter how much PTV plays may glamorise or our reporters try to convince, the reality remains that neither the West alone is a comfort zone, nor can we purchase happiness in a shopping mall. For some, it definitely is a protected zone; peace and happiness, however, lie within ourselves; not in being living mannequins for the material adornments of the hour, whereby our worth is determined by what we have or don't have, rather than what we are, what we do or what we know.

Wealth or West is not a short cut to happiness or comfort of starving souls. This is why some people who seem to have nothing in the East are very happy, while others who seem to have everything in the West are not. Happiness is more than an emotion such as sadness or love or guilt. Happiness is not caused simply by entertaining our whims, which are an obstacle to happiness. Happiness is not merely a life lived by accumulating moments of pleasure in a particular country. On the contrary, happiness is a long lasting enduring enjoyment that comes of real inner satisfaction. It is not in falling in love with living, but in reaping the reward for achieving a good character based on permanent norms.

Productive career, romance, friendship and hobbies are not the values for inner satisfaction as suggested by the happiness-promising books in the West. We cannot put the meaning on the things. When we leave aside permanent norms, as described by the religion we proclaim, we are in no position to change the inside from which the quality of our life flows.