It is normal to coincide with people you know when walking the streets in a medium or small city in our Latin America. Usually, people greet each other even if they do not know each other. In other places, such as a large metropolis or megalopolis, it is less frequent to meet someone you know.
To be in contact there must be a prior appointment. This defines the coldness of social relations that modern man cultivates in populous cities. Population density curtails the need for human warmth; the caress is perhaps an empty expression of affection.
In all encounters one way or another, the social relationship creates a constant that identifies that fact as if it were a brand and without that mark, the friendly greeting or gesture as a symbol, whether gestural or verbal, would not be conceived as a greeting. At least does who practice it are people with a minimum of “stable psychological” condition or at least what is called “normal”.
The brand of the human individual when greeting each other is the smile. Humans laugh out loud and can denote many and different emotions, but the smile is a hallmark of positive emotions and of course, it is the icon of positive psychology and psychological well-being. The smile becomes the vehicle that the human being uses to break down barriers or to demolish walls that rise up in front of each step that is given.
The experience of those who have a smile for every moment knows that they have a formidable weapon to prevent a disease of whatever kind be it somatic, psychological or spiritual. That is, if we start from the fact that the smile has a focal point, it indicates that the environment is comfortable for that place and at that moment.
Apart from being the true symbol of joy, it is, therefore, the very condition of approaching a state of well-being. As we know, negative and positive emotions coexist; these facilitate the creation of new social relationships and friendships. Showing the simple and eloquent smile removes the factors that demotivate social relationships.
In addition, the smile is able to inhibit the possible hostile behaviors that others may have towards us. That is, it favors confidence both in oneself and in others. Who does not trust, does not communicate, does not open, is not located as a member of a community; does not create stable and deep relationships; has no capacity to cultivate true friendships. Without trust, there is no social life.
Now, the person adjusts to the surrounding environment looking most of the time for acceptance as an individual within the group where he feels more identified. But this acceptance by the group means for any human being a recognition that may have a greater value within its psycho-cognitive structure than just overcoming any material lacking. In any case, the achievement of well-being would include the achievements of the individual and, based on his/her freedom, would be based on the abilities of each person.
To talk a little about the term well-being, we must resort to both subjective and psychological conditions such as sensations and emotions. For example, for some people who lack a specific material good, this good would not be taken into consideration for their feeling of well-being, while for another person it would be considered urgent the possession of that good.
The fact becomes objective when those who need it have it in their power. We can then say that a person who is deprived of some resource, which prevents him from feeling satisfied, is totally spiritually opposite to another person who has the capacity to fulfill the realization of the higher human interest needless of the material possession. Of course, the second person because of his objective condition of life, having the necessary material conditions for his experience, has a greater capacity to choose a better level of life.
But without a doubt, well-being is an evaluative and gradual concept. And we ask ourselves, based on what values and circumstances, the wellbeing that arises subjectively from the psychological burden, implies having to emerge towards the material as a changing process and this is concretized in circumstances or characteristics, in order to attribute well-being to a specific person.
It is a long question that can be answered if we observe that the concept of well-being, as a mixed concept in which characteristics of two types are combined: on the one hand, the characteristics that have to do with the external, that is, material goods such as wealth, economic power, political power; the comforts with which it is counted, the free time for the leisure, health, and education.
On the other hand, there are the internal states of the individual and as far as they can be psychological or spiritual determinants to be in a position to decide conveniently on the acceptance or not of a way of living with its negative or positive content. They are considered valuable. Such is the case of pleasure, happiness, contentment, the feeling of dignity, hope and, in general, everything that results from the realization of desires, and all the decisions that in a balanced person arises happiness.
In sharp contrast to he who could not be happy, in spite of having material conditions in abundance, but spiritually that same saturation derives into a weak willpower, thus maintaining that person with a sad or irascible character, with little health, or having a useless life, asleep and tormented by anxieties and resentments.
The relationship between these 2 states, both material and psychic, is difficult to establish. The question is not so light to determine in what way we can hierarchize material goods or mental goods, as the basis of the behavior of the individual in front of a manifestation of his psyche as pleasure, for example.
Pleasure is the result of the satisfaction of our desires or concerns, not necessarily informed by logic or guided by prudence. There are authors who define reason as the only condition that leads man to the happy state, and pleasure is the only thing that should have great value within that behavior. But the pleasure obtained from the virtuous practice of reason, that is, through the habit of acting rationally in the different spheres of life.
Only in this way will we achieve the necessary balance for a good choice; to choose what really is worth as an individual value and to desire what is worth as a single act also product of reason what we truly desire, not for the vulgar appetite but for what cultivated taste presents us as desirable.
