Happy = Unhappy?
Since young I’ve never been able to tell people how I feel; I’ve always kept it inside.
Everyone seems obsessed with happiness and positivity. We live in a society where everyone has smiling photos and happy lives.
So I went along with it. I make my profile photo’s look like everyone else’s, I smile and talk about the weather like everyone else… but what I’m presenting isn’t real a lot of the time.
Sometimes I wonder — what if nobody’s really that happy? What if everyone else is looking at everyone else and pretending to be happy because it’s what they think is ‘normal’.
What if we’re all liars pretending to be something we’re not, when really, feeling sad or discontent IS normal and if one person just stood up and admitted it we’d all start to realize what a farce it really is….
Can seeking happiness make people unhappy?
I came across this interesting paper which posits a paradoxical idea, in that, perhaps those people who spend a hefty amount of their time thinking about happiness may well be inadvertently pushing themselves in the opposite direction.
This isn’t just an idea though, studies have confirmed that those who value happiness more, reported lower levels of happiness. How awful is that? There’s something disturbingly ironic and deeply sad about the idea that the very searching for happiness leads to its demise. It reminds me of a quote:
“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” — Allen Saunders
Hello, sufferer..
I read this Schopenhauer quote a few years back.
“A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbour with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he is happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.”
This might be wrong, but it would be much better to put it out there rather to let the idea fizzle out in my brain.
There might be 2 types of people, which the intrinsic value that they hold either in the means, or in the ends. In other words, some people can be satisfied after reaching the end of their desires. Money, material wealth, family, etc. Their happiness is defined in the things that are tangible.
The second type of people, are more satisfied with the means itself. Meaning, they enjoy the journey much more than the goal. The goal is just to set a directions for which they based their motivation upon. Art, living, craftsmanship and adventure is an example of it.
In short, to achieve the goal is something that wouldn’t benefit them, and to achieve them would result that passionate flame of motivation to died out, leaving them with an empty husk. The only way the second type of people can live their life, is to be on the road, to keep on moving forward, by creating new goals to chase to.
Obviously, this is not a distinct separation and more of a spectrum, that we can place people on what sides they lean to.
Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy includes a view of happiness as the negation of pain while suffering is a positive (palpable and present) phenomenon in contrast. He also views constant striving to be a necessary aspect of this life.
First, he sees a constant striving in life. In our life we have things we work towards whether consciously or unconsciously. However, is there ever a point of non-striving? A point of rest? Even in retirement wouldn’t we be striving to have a good retirement? It seems as though there is no point in our life where we aren’t striving after something.
Secondly, Schopenhauer posits the attitude that life is merely a disruptive bump in the “calm of nothingness”. Essentially, before we were born and after we die we are in this state of nothingness where stress and suffering can’t harm us because there is no “us” to experience it. Life, on the other hand, provides the opportunity for us to suffer.
Finally, Schopenhauer addresses the question of happiness by thinking of happiness not as a positive phenomenon but rather as the absence of suffering. Suffering on the other hand is a positive phenomenon. He gives an example of how we aren’t usually conscious about how healthy our body is but our attention races towards any small irritation that body may face.
Practically, this conception of life might lead one to be kinder to others. If life is suffering, then we’re all fellow sufferers in need of care and compassion from one another.
Everyone deserves happiness
All people, no matter age, gender, ethnicity, opinions, wealth, lifestyle or sexuality should be happy. I guess that life can be hard and we should take care of ourselves and others, spread kindness and try to be happy.
