The essential is “Visible” to the eyes.

Firstly, let me borrow some lines from the book named “THREE CHEERS FOR GHANA!” by Robert Peprah-Gyamfi, published by iUniverse, Inc., New York in 2008:

“As I drove through the city of Accra during the first few days of my stay, it appeared to me as though the first and third worlds had literally crashed together on the streets of the nation’s capital; the fallout from the unusual collision was everywhere apparent!”

Today if you go to any corners of “third countries”, you’d be overwhelmed by full of things, goods, materials, and especially in capital cities, you can get almost everything you want as long as you pay money. However it is true that there’re people in poverty and some places so-called “slum”, yet it doesn’t mean that they can’t eat. As far as Ghana is concerned, people are fleshy, well-fed, and chubby, and their expressions are lively, cheerful, joyful, and smiles are everywhere as many as people living life in peace, and above all, I don’t see “beggars”, except Romany, here in Ghana unlike European countries, which are the “first countries” ironically. It is just simple that there’s “the third country” in a developed country while there’s “the first country” in a developing country. You may regard India as a developing country but it is said that 10% of population is “extraordinary rich” in India, as many as population of Japan. It appears to me that contradictions in the first countries are rather serious and insolvable than ones in the third, which would become “the first” one day. 

Nevertheless, there is a big difference between the first and the third counties in terms of environment: it is social infrastructure such as roads, ports, water supply, electricity supply, public transportations, Yes, as the word “Develop” shows, this categorization just tells us the degree of “physical development” of countries, which is tangible (you can touch), which doesn’t describe people’s happiness, which is intangible (you can’t touch). My main focus is always people and their lives and levels of modernization have no meaning to me. Well, here is a question: Why do you develop your country? To seek for happiness? Yes, human beings “thought” that it would bring us happiness. As a matter of fact, the irony and contradiction above occurred in “the first countries”. 

I jus recalled a question at 10 years old, which I asked my teacher when he mentioned that Japan’s economy had been picking up since 1960s: “So what will happen after Development? He got stunned because he seemed never to have thought of it. Which would you prefer?: it’s developing in terms of social infrastructure, but you’re happy in terms of life, or it’s developed in terms of physical environment, but you’re deserted in terms of happiness. Well it’s very true that social infrastructure is necessary for us to sustain human life in safe and peace; I never say it’s not important. My point is that it’s just useful, but it doesn’t automatically bring us happiness. Why do we need to develop our county? To have homeless and beggars on streets? The essential is happiness of people.

So please do not judge people and countries by the level of social infrastructure, which has nothing to do with people’s happiness, but by the contents of people and the degree of happiness. I know that you have a question in your mind. As I mentioned, happiness is intangible, which you can’t touch or see, so how do you measure it? In truth, there is no “scientific” way to measure it but I “subjectively” visualize happiness by the degree of Smile. If your smile is naturally developing, you’re developed by happiness, while if your smile is artificially developed, you’re developing happiness. With the measure of Smile, it’d be: L’essentiel est visible pour les yeux. - The essential is “visible” to the eyes.