LET’S CHEER THE NATION UP!

To be successful Estonia needs positive emotions. Appointing the Minister of State for Happiness would also immediately boost the Estonian economy. 

I don’t believe that there is one specific pill to turn Estonia into successful – you give a pill to 1.3 million people and everybody immediately feels better. Less taxes, more benefits and other usual bureaucratic propaganda pills. No. The wish of the majority of people for better, more fierce and interesting life will guarantee the success. The success is like a contagious disease that will also turn the neighbours to whom you have given your hand successful.

Success is a positive emotion that forces also people who are lazybones in spirit to wake up at 6 am and does not let them near the bed before 12 AM. Success is a will to achieve, aspire, and conquer. To surprise and astonish. To be better than others. Success is a belief that everything can become better. Success is money that you cannot see, but you still hope to receive.

At the moment Estonia is not successful. At the moment Estonia is not aspiring. Estonia has given up. Is tired. Dried-up. Waits for death (and/or extinction). It is painful to watch; it is painful l to exist. To bear one’s own (or your country’s, family’s) deterioration and vanishing is the same as being in the ship that is already sinking, but the water has not reached your cabin. Let’s try to bear? You cannot avoid drowning that way. Perhaps we can still swim out!

Thank God that I am not doing anything?

Peeter Koppel just confirmed that new depression has begun. The government cannot motivate the nation. The question is not about the lack of vision or narrative or some other word, it’s that it absolutely does nothing (that would inspire, excite, stimulate). Estonia just exists. Like an overgrown spruce that is about to break. Fine-tuning has become a silent defeat to its destiny. The ship is not completely full of water, but the majority of people is drowning in the freezing water…

Even Finland is not a nice place to work in. How long can you stand living in a small dorm room and slurp the oatmeal soup. The owner of the dorm is sick of your foreign face. It is bad in Finland, away from the family. It is bad at home, the wife is unhappy. The emotion is bad; there is no motivation to make things better. Everything is over, is it enough? No.

Motivation arises when there are specific carrots that we eagerly want to get. For example developing real-estate with joy – the banks are lending daringly money, people are paying three or four times more than the price of the building, lend their hearts into pieces, but at least there is progression in life. Development. A new crib.

All sorts of booms are generally being unambiguously derogated. However, the virtue of the boom period is the people’s wish to do something, including work. Also voluntary work. Only during the boom period cities have been developed, something has been arranged. Something eternal has been created.

Stagnated society kills all sorts of wish to accomplish something. During the last depression I accidentally ran into Jaanus Otsa. I asked how he was doing. He answered: “Really great! I’m not doing anything. Everyone else is doing, money burns. I am not doing anything and I haven’t lost anything!”

The Minister of State for Happiness, I am waiting for you!

You cannot start with anything new in the frozen society. You will destroy yourself. The investor’s golden thought “Everything that is rising will rise, and everything that is falling will fall” applies perfectly to the modern Estonia.

Estonia is falling and falling and falling. This fall can be turned into a rise with a change of the trend – this needs a very important boost. At the moment Estonia does not have this. The change of the emotion does not start with the success, but with the new attitude. I want money, I want fame, I want children, I want the house, I want, I want, I want. And I will achieve this. Speaking in terms of music, we have not even looked for our counterpoint, let alone found it.

Economy and culture stand on the state of mind. The belief of how (more specifically how well) it will be tomorrow. When we think about what would turn Estonia quicker into a positive trend, then the most important is the people’s will to live, work, entertain, be loved, cared and hugged here. When we do not have this feeling, then people will escape from a city to countryside, abroad, somewhere away. Somewhere perhaps better place. Some will escape to the other world. And cannot even regret.

The United Arab Emirates, starting with their stormy political innovations, appointed a fifth woman minister who has to ensure that happiness is not merely a wishful thinking in people’s lives. Ohoud al-Roum, the Minister of State for Happiness has to initiate real projects that could lead to happiness.

Without irony I believe that the appointment of a minister of state for happiness would immediately boost the Estonian economy – I felt much better when I realised that besides me the Arabs as well are dreaming of a happy and joyful country. I am not alone.