{"id":1618,"date":"2016-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.newyorkcafe.hu\/legy-halas-azert-amid-van-s-boldog-lesz-az-eleted\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T13:41:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T12:41:45","slug":"be-grateful-for-what-you-have-and-your-life-will-be-a-happy-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/legy-halas-azert-amid-van-s-boldog-lesz-az-eleted\/","title":{"rendered":"Be grateful for what you have, and your life will be a happy one!"},"content":{"rendered":"<strong><em>These days, so many of us find ourselves in unbalanced life situations \u2013 whether we\u2019re single, have suffered losses, or are struggling to come to terms with our emotional wounds. How can we change all this, and how can we make our lives \u2013 and our relationships with those around us \u2013 better?<\/em><\/strong>\n\n<strong>Professor Dr Em\u0151ke Bagdy, and her daughter, Dr No\u00e9mi Cs\u00e1sz\u00e1r, honoured our caf\u00e9 with their presence and were also our guests at our \u2018Artists\u2019 Circle\u2019 lecture series, after which we chatted over a glass of champagne about life\u2019s difficulties and possible ways of overcoming them.\u00a0<\/strong>\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4><\/h4>\n<h4>The New Year has dawned, marking the start of a new chapter, yet we are still carrying our pain, our grievances and our wounds with us. How should we approach the New Year and the future that lies ahead?<\/h4>\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>Em\u0151ke:<\/strong>\u00a0New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 S\u00e1ndor Br\u00f3dy \u2013 the charming soul of the company \u2013 New York Caf\u00e9\u00a0<strong>After all, when we pay attention to others, we are not focusing on ourselves and our problems, and this puts an end to our self-absorption.<\/strong>\u00a0It is a fact that when we are in pain or have a problem, we start to focus on ourselves. We become narcissistic. This is the so-called process of self-love and self-indulgence. (When we have a toothache, for example, our tongue is constantly touching the affected tooth. But why, when it makes no sense at all?)\u00a0<strong>We need to stop focusing on ourselves and breaking out of our narrow-mindedness.\u00a0<\/strong>New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 S\u00e1ndor Br\u00f3dy \u2013 the charming soul of the company\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>No\u00e9mi:\u00a0<\/strong>New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 Jen\u0151 Heltai \u2013 who regarded the New York Caf\u00e9 as his home \u2013 New York Caf\u00e9\n\n&nbsp;\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h4>How can we avoid or change this sort of attitude within ourselves?<\/h4>\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>No\u00e9mi:\u00a0<\/strong>New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 Jen\u0151 Heltai \u2013 who regarded the New York Caf\u00e9 as his home\u00a0<strong>I may be here now, alone and feeling abandoned, bringing up my child on my own, but this is MY life.<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Unique, unrivalled, one-of-a-kind.<\/strong>\u00a0Just as my own child is unique, one of a kind and irreplaceable.\n\nIf I had to take the place of anyone else, even for just a day or an hour, it is by no means certain that my assessment would be any more positive.\n\nAnother suggestion from psychology for such situations is the ability to feel gratitude<strong>. Do we give thanks for being here in this world?! After all, we\u2019ve done nothing to deserve it\u2026 Our very existence is a gift we\u2019ve been given by someone, for a time, and it is only right to accept that gift with joy, because the one who gave it did so out of love.<\/strong>\u00a0He could have given it to someone else, but we were the ones who got a share of the billion.\n\nGratitude can go a long way in situations like this! Let\u2019s not focus on all the things we can\u2019t be happy about. Let\u2019s focus on all the things we can be happy about, and\u00a0<strong>Let us be glad for what we have, and let us give thanks for it, for this gratitude will come back to us! \u00a0<\/strong>\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>Em\u0151ke:<\/strong>\u00a0Gratitude has become a key concept in the psychology of happiness. There is a philosopher called Simone Weil, who was Pilinszky\u2019s favourite philosopher. She said that there is a very important sentence on which we should all reflect:\u00a0<strong>\u201eLet\u2019s learn to long for what is already ours!\u201d<\/strong>\n<h2><\/h2>\n&nbsp;\n<h4>However, it often happens in life that, even though we know we ought to be grateful, we are unable to show this to others because of our anger or past grievances. How can we change this?<\/h4>\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>No\u00e9mi:\u00a0<\/strong>Anger, loss and guilt are like twins. Triplets.  Consequently, when we feel anger, we have in fact experienced some kind of loss, and this stirs up anger towards ourselves, and of course the resulting guilt as well. So at such times, we approach things with this trio of emotions, the root of which is loss.\n\nAt such times, the most important thing is to be able to quiet our minds a little. Even if only for half an hour! Let\u2019s practise meditation and reflect on what it is about this loss that we most want to understand, accept and, above all, make part of the story that is our personal life. Because once this loss has found its rightful place within us, we no longer need to be angry about it, nor do we need to find someone to blame \u2013 be it our partner, our child or our parents \u2013 but we can experience the miracle of who we are.\n\n<strong>At the same time, losses are a necessary part of life.<\/strong>\u00a0We experience what are known as \u2018normative losses\u2019. This means, for example, that when we are born, we lose the womb. When we are separated from our mother as we go to the cr\u00e8che or nursery, we lose her embracing arms. Not forever, but to some extent irreversibly. Every stage of development involves a loss. Consequently, it is a crisis in which we must let go of something in order to grasp something new.\u00a0<strong>If I\u2019m clutching something in my hand, I can\u2019t hold on to anything else. That\u2019s what our losses are like.<\/strong>\n\nNew York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 Jen\u0151 K\u00e1lm\u00e1n \u2013 who never lost his sense of humour \u2013 New York Caf\u00e9\n<h2><\/h2>\n&nbsp;\n<h4><\/h4>\n<h4>All this seems so obvious, and yet we find it so difficult to cope with crises and painful changes throughout our lives. Why is that?<\/h4>\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>Em\u0151ke:<\/strong>\u00a0The sin of our culture today is that it teaches us to keep the human soul in a state of perpetual infancy. For it tells us: \u2019Make yourself happy, because you deserve it! Look after yourself and no one else!\u201e And in doing so, it preserves a state of being that is very childish. For a child wants to receive, and has a right to do so, since it is their parents who provide for them.\n\n\u201dGive me nourishment, protection, security!\u2019 \u2013 and this does last for a certain time \u2013 until around the age of 20 \u2013 as we go through the normative life crises.\u00a0 By then, we come to accept it: all right, I\u2019m entitled to it, I\u2019ll get it, and I can even ask for it, because this is the condition for me to stock up on everything \u2013 the \u2018ammunition\u2019 \u2013 so that I, in turn, can give it to others later. After all, this is how I\u2019ll become an adult!\n\nEricson, a world-renowned psychotherapist, said that three things are needed to become an adult.\u00a0<strong>I am only an adult if I can make a commitment, take on responsibility and give.<\/strong>\u00a0What? From myself, what I have been given. From my abilities, the service of my vocation; from my capacity for love, the continuation of the family, the continuation of life.\n\nThere is no such thing as life having no meaning. It has a central meaning!\u00a0<strong>If you are a woman, then, for example, you give birth to children and carry on the cycle of life. If you are a man, you create and build, because that is how you are biologically wired, and because you are capable of fathering children.\u00a0<\/strong>You can create, build a house, plant a tree. The man is the bearer of the creative principle, whilst the woman is the creative, nurturing and realising principle. For us women, all our abilities \u2013 and indeed our physical constitution \u2013 point to the fact that we should use these to bring children into the world, if at all possible. This is the central meaning of life! Once a person discovers the creative purpose of their life, their life is already on the right track! It is a difficult, labour-intensive task, but it is worth it.\n\n&nbsp;","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days, so many of us find ourselves in unbalanced life situations \u2013 whether we\u2019re single, have suffered losses, or are struggling to come to terms with our emotional wounds. How can we change all this, and how can we make our lives \u2013 and our relationships with those around us \u2013 better?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eloadasok"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3938,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions\/3938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}