The more I think about it, it seems that long-term happiness is something many people spend their lives seeking OR they believe it’s something they used to have and lost.
That makes me wonder if we are truly ever happy? Or if it’s something that is always just out of reach (in the future or in the past).
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Let’s not aspire to happiness. Your brain is not wired to be happy all the time. Everyone will always come back down to baseline it’s programmed into our biology/psychology. Maybe it’s better to be content and accept the things you already have
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
Thanks for this. Went and read the whole thing and it’s beautiful!
This is a really cool quote, thanks for sharing it!
This is a new found perspective I’ve been trying to act on and it keeps me “happy” in the sense of being content. SSRIs helped me come out of a dark place and find that baseline and appreciate that what I have is just fine. I’ve been off them for a good 4-5 months now and have been able to keep acting on this perspective. Reducing the amount I drink and smoke has also really helped me stay at baseline. I was not consuming these things with my best interest in mind. I am better off only having these things in my home for special events.
I’ve got my little place to live, my cat, my little hobbies, and I go on my daily little walk. That’s just fine and enough to be content. I’m comfortable and don’t need much more. I don’t really need to search for bliss all the time. I’ll save that for a concert, food festival, hanging out with good friends, playing a new game, etc.
Well then is it better to say that we should redefine what happiness means? Or is it that happiness means something different to each individual? Sometimes I feel like what I define as happy is really just being content to someone else. This is more of a philosophical question, or maybe more specifically a metaphysical question. What is happiness?
I’m happy. Family healthy, relationships are great. I love my job, I make good money, enjoy the work and people. I’m buying my first house soon though so perhaps may add some stress but I tend not to worry about worrying.
Sometimes I feel like a golden retriever, just happy to be around.
Same. But it took a long time. Once I realized we humans are hardwired with social and emotional connections being primary, my life got way better. There is no comparison to feeling connected — way better than chasing prestige, status, or knowledge.
God bless you dude. I’m happy for you. I’ll take some happiness from your post.
Similar position. I also realize how lucky I’ve been in life in comparison to the less fortunate.
Same, sometimes (usually while driving for some reason) I just get overwhelmed with happiness at how well my life is going. Yeah it’s not perfect, and obviously I was incredibly lucky to get where I am, but it’s more than enough for me to be truly content.
There are no final states in life. There’s no “ever after”. Real-life stories do not end.
You can be truly happy, but it will end.
“You cannot fetch happy. Happy happens.”
-Dog of Wisdom
Happiness is a choice. You can choose to see only the negative or choose to find joy and contentment in the little things you have and what you have accomplished.
There are people who live in poverty that have true happiness. There are people who are terminally I’ll who are truly happy.
Most importantly, it’s ok to seek help if you are unhappy. It’s much easier to be happy when you don’t try to take everything on by yourself.
In many cases, I agree, but this comment definitely isn’t true for those with mental illness etc. I would argue it’s a matter of perspective, and not all aspects of perspective can be changed on a whim.
I 100% agree with you, that’s kind of what I was getting at by suggesting to seek help
Life is a tragedy when looked at a whole. All is given and taken away. Appreciate the little moments you get in a day. Attempt not to let the dread of reality weigh on you too much. I don’t remember being anxious or worried before being alive so I have concluded for myself that life after death won’t exactly be worrisome either. Don’t want to die but I sure as hell don’t want to spend my life worried about death as that steals my time from me.
Remind me of a South Park end of episode moral, said by Butters this time :
Goth Kid : I guess you can join up with us if you want.
Goth Kid 2 : Yeah. We’re gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.
Butters : Uh, uhm no thanks. I love life.
Stan : Huh? But you just got dumped.
Butters : Well yeah, and I’m sad, but at the same time I’m really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It’s like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin’ really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I’m feelin’ is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.
Goth Kid 2 : Yeah.
Stan : No. No, Butters, that doesn’t sound stupid at all.
Butters : Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clique, guys, but, to be honest, I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid.
We have ups and downs and we need both if we seek happiness.
Lasting happiness? There’s always going to be downs as well as ups in life. Stoicism will teach you how to handle the pitfalls in life without dwelling on them and helping you to get on in life. Buddhism will help you to understand that life is full of sorrow but that the journey is it’s own reward and that joy can be found anywhere.
A perpetual state of satisfaction can be reached that’s liberally peppered with happiness. Happiness is not an end goal. It’s the after affect of a effortful life that invites playfulness and new experiences.
The key word here is effort. Happiness should not be the main goal. Living your values. Finding a process and journey that meets your values and challenges you slightly will bring satisfaction.
Be carful of self help books and systems. Many are designed to put you on a perpetual wheel of needing more and more books to buy and classes to take. They are money generators that will tell you they offer the golden cure. And if you didn’t succeed with the system in a few months then here’s part two you can buy.
I do like THE HAPPINESS LAB podcast as a starting point. There’s a free Yale course too. The teaching there can get you to examine some stuff.
Be kinder to yourself but do put some challenges in your way. Happiness is not about having a placid life.
It sounds like you’re dealing with absolutes. Perfection is probably unattainable, but we can get exponentially close. Drugs or no drugs, that part would be more of a personal thing.
We evolved on the hustle, we were selectively bred for marginal utility.
We don’t want good, we want better.
Better than yesterday, better than the next guy, whatever, don’t care. Just an uptick in one way or another.
So no, you can’t sustain that indefinitely. If you’re making constant gains, then that saturates very quickly, and betterer becomes the new bare minimum.
Chasing that is destructive as hell, same as any addiction.
If you work out how to work the system to use losses to keep wins cheap, you may just win at life.
Just like with temperature, we only feel the relative difference. If the difference is sudden and strong heat, it feels extrem. Like a rockstar getting famous and playing on stage. After these changes subside we feel the stark difference between. the hangover, the withdrawal symptoms. everything feels cold after you spent some time in warm water. Happiness is like that. You can push yourself to a new high, but afterwards you feel the difference between the high and the normal. like many said already its about having a good baseline. If you push that baseline with drugs, everything normal will feel worse.
No.
Feeling “okay” is the lasting state. You cannot feel persistent goodness without any badness to compare. Constant goodness turns to “okay”.
I think happiness is a misunderstood concept. It’s something that many people take for granted when they’re young, but as they get older it seems to wane and comes with a lot more caveats. Your baseline used to be happy, but now your baseline is more neutral. You spend 80% of your time being neither happy nor sad. The idea of being happy all the time is sort of a farce, and I tend to assume people who claim to be are either lying or stupid.
Happiness is more about taking a step back from your life and viewing it all in one big picture. If you like what you see, then you can consider yourself happy, even if that doesn’t mean you’re smiling about it right this moment.
https://piped.video/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o&t=286
Well. Western culture tends to be goal focused. For starters, that could be something to ditch and focus making the journey more pleasant.
That can be a double edged sword.