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How to Handle Happiness
While the world is going to shambles
My Geriatric Journal #14
My wife and I were happily working in the garden a few days ago when two very young women approached us. We greeted them cooly — it is rare to have strangers walk into our remote driveway unless it is Saturday and someone has turned the Jehovah’s Witnesses loose on our mountain.
They were not selling salvation, but happiness. Apparently there is a government-sponsored program in Puerto Rico that sends highly-motivated young people into the hinterlands to convince understandably-depressed citizens not to commit suicide.
I am not joking. The program is called Assmca. I have no idea what that stands for, but it has a 24-hour help line where people are waiting to help distraught citizens to find “answers and solutions to your emotional situation.” The objective of the program is explicitly to prevent suicide.
I’m not sure it is related, but when you live on an island that recently went through weeks of civil uprisings that ousted one governor — helped oust a second— and saw a third installed within a couple of days, you might understand why some people might have an emotional situation.
Add to that the mess that remains almost two years after two hurricanes (especially María, the most…
