Let us explore the treasures hidden in African proverbs, and especially in Ivory Coast with the famous “Le vrai bonheur, on ne l’apprécie que lorsqu’on l’a perdu.” In English, you could translate it by “We appreciate the genuine happiness once we lost it.” What does it mean, and how can we use this saying in our daily lives?
Happiness is the ultimate goal of every single human being on earth. The different ways to reach this happiness will lead us to take multiple paths that will constitute our own life. Sometimes, the daily routine can be so heavy that we will tend to forget about why we have been brought on the planet and how we could act to make this short existence a real joy for us and the people around us. The French “metro boulot dodo”, which consists in taking the public transportation, going to work and going back home in the evening to take a shower and sleep, is sometimes kind of overwhelming, and it is not always easy to take a deep breath and consider life at a higher level.
Appreciating the genuine happiness only when it has just been lost is a sort of warning. Just live the moment when it is possible, because life is short and unsure, and you do not know when all of this will end. Of course, the life expectancy is much longer than what it was a few centuries ago, but it does not make us invincible, and youth is not an eternal protection.
Instead of having regrets because we did not appreciate our moments of happiness as their fair value, we should be aware that some moments we are living may not happen again, and consider them as genuinely precious at the time we are living them. Do not wish you had lived your happiness better if you only knew, but live it for real when it is here before you. How do you know this is real happiness then? This is the question you have to answer, in order not to miss something and live on regrets.