Are we a discontented, constantly grumbling nation as we appear to be, according to many world listings? Latest Eurostat data, published to mark the International Day of Happiness on March 20, add nothing new to the picture. Bulgarians are again among the least contented nations with the lowest purchasing capacity among the 28 countries members of the EU. As to the latter, it is incontestable, but is our low self-esteem the result of the difficulties we are encountering and the lack of material prosperity, or does it come down to the Bulgarian memory-chip that one former Prime Minister advised us to replace? “We, Bulgarians are in the role of the ugly ducklings who don’t know they are swans,” says psychologist Madlen Algafari, in an attempt to explain the nation’s low self-esteem. But is it just life’s problems that push us to create this picture of ourselves, or is there something else?

“I have been traveling a great deal in recent years, I have worked with people from other countries and all the time I was thinking to myself that we don’t know how to cherish what we have, to value what we are capable of and what we are,” says Madlen Algafari. The roots of our not particularly high self-esteem, in her words, go back to antiquity.

“We have so much negativism in our history,” she says. “If we go back in time, to the Tibetan expanses and our ancestors, we shall see that their cults, their beliefs had no rituals extolling the good deities, only rituals to appease the evil ones. Our ancestors lived in extreme weather conditions, they had a very difficult life and that meant they always had to be on their toes. In a word – they had sensors for detecting evil. Perhaps it was in those times, that this constant expectation of evil and hostility from the surrounding world entered our bloodstream, our very cells.”

“But we must not forget we have a tenacity, a resourcefulness, a generosity and an incredible ability of regarding ourselves with a sense of humour, such as few nations possess,” Madlen Algafari says further. In her words, it is time to say goodbye to some of our traditional traits, but to keep others we do not particularly appreciate, though they affect our national character a great deal. How many people realize, for example, that most of the Bulgarian proverbs have a negative connotation, compared to other nations? For example: Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing, or A bowed head the sharp sword shall not chop off.

It is by no means true that we are inherently pessimistic, constantly grumbling and discontent as a nation, says Margarita Bakracheva from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute for Population and Human Studies.

“We definitely have character traits that are traditional, but because of the environment we have been living in, which is changing rapidly, some of them may escalate and become more visible.”

“We have confirmed this in different years with studies we have conducted with different groups of people – Bulgarians are happy but discontent. And that is no contradiction. The answers the respondents gave show that they measure happiness in terms of health, love, family, friends, sun and a wide range of other definitions. So, we are in fact managing to be happy and to know the difference between happiness, which is a state of the spirit, and the things we ourselves are in a capacity to alter. Fortunately, it seems Bulgarians have not become hardened to nature and the good things in life. But the lack of contentment, of security is one reason why we rarely look back at the good times; we are constantly ruminating and shuddering at the prospect of how we shall survive or what the future will hold.”

There is a radical decline in motivation and a deficit of hope, and the reason for this to a great extent is the lack of security, says Margarita Bakracheva. When there is no security or a fundament to step on, with the passage of years hope and belief that anything will change decline. This makes people passive and reconciled, with the result that they take a “from hand to mouth” attitude, she says and adds:

“What is, perhaps, optimistic is that we are among the few nations, which have to a great extent preserved friendship among people. For example, you can still call someone up and arrange to meet with him right away, or you can just turn up at his doorstep – i.e. we have preserved the spontaneity in our personal relationships. That is something that does not exist in the industrialized nations,” Margarita Bakracheva says.

English version: Milena Daynova