crappiness of happiness

A friend asked me how I would sum up the content of my new book in one sentence. The short answer: "Ecstasy in Hell!"

Yeah, but how ... yeah, butt what?

The pursuit of happiness is overrated. Happiness is not. See, as long as you pursue happiness you can't have it. So, why would you want to pursue happiness instead of enjoying it? You are happy or you aren't--there is no middle ground. Nobody is almost happy or half depressed.

The experience of happiness is rather sparse. We have developed myths about the proper pursuit of happiness, and our belief in happy-making myths is more important to us than actually being happy. Let's bludgeon three of these myths out of existence.

Life is messy, and it will stay that way. If we must fix the world before we can relax and enjoy a moment of happiness, we are doomed. Miserable people, on a mission to make the world a better place, will make the world more miserable. I don't trust unhappy do-gooders.

The supposedly meaningful maxim: "Leave the world a better place!" is frighteningly meaningless and in the incompetent hands of the unhappy, anything that seems better to them is guaranteed to take a turn for the worse. If you are unhappy with the universe, take a nap. But please don't do anything to make it better.

Do you know why you don't like your bloody world? Because every dork has tried to improve it. That includes--but is not limited to--Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. They wanted a better world as well. By all means put horse manure under your rose bushes if you so desire, but don't screw with my world. I don't need more of other people's harebrained ideas to improve the law "for my safety." What am I talking about? Health Nazis, like NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, want to outlaw salt. Salt? Yes, salt! I am confident it'll be illegal for me to pick my own nose, soon.

If you are unhappy with your reality, the world is not the cause of your misery. You are. And don't even consider improving yourself to take care of that problem: you are beyond help. The situation is hopeless and nothing better could happen to you.

Hopelessness is the portal to expanded happiness!

Dopey Hope No. 1: "One day I shall be sane and because of my healthy noodle, my world will be more enjoyable."

You will never be sane.

The DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) lacks a definition of sanity, but it describes you and me in excruciating detail. We are nuts, all of us, in different departments and on a variety of intensity levels.

We are a bit cuckoo, and some of us a little more than others. So what? Call it eccentric if you prefer but quit tinkering with your noggin'. You are doing fine. Few things are as liberating as the realization that you will never be normal or like other people. Other people will always be nuttier than you can imagine. Trust me, you don't want to be like them.

Putting an end to your quest for sanity translates to instant relaxation and provides a crucial foundation for happiness. Go for it. You can be there before noon tomorrow.

Dopey Hope No. 2: "One day I shall be surrounded by individuals who truly understand and respect me. Feeling understood will make me think better of myself."

You will never find a person who understands you!

I don't know how to break it to you, but you will die alone. Nobody cares to croak with you. A couple of teary-eyed folks may hang around, but the performance of the day will be yours.

We were alone when we were born. No matter how creepily "loving" and feng shui the atmosphere during your water birth was, the crappy pain you had to experience while transitioning from mom's pot belly to a rather cold environment akin to Siberia was exclusively yours. Since then, you have been on death row and it won't be commuted. Sorry!

Apropos, if waterboarding is torture, so is child birth. If newborns could talk, they would scream for a lawyer and the Geneva Convention. Put an adult through the same procedure that every baby experiences during birth, and pregnancy would be outlawed as a crime against humanity. Under a multitude of risks to life and limb, each one of us was cruelly tortured into this life. To add insult to injury, the entire blasted family was looking forward to our most painful experience of a lifetime.

I acknowledge that our mothers had their heaping share of pain to deal with, but they volunteered to participate. We did not. However, individuals live through this mandatory event in gruesome loneliness. It's great to have company, but pharmaceuticals are better suited to move this chapter quickly into the past.

Some of us develop the idea that life becomes more bearable in a group. 'Bearable' doesn't equal happiness for me, but who am I to judge the lemmings? You mean dying will be more fun when we "belong?" The only thing that improves in a group is the stupidity of each individual member. It can jump up exponentially in fact. Think committee decisions.

The first tree you ever saw in your life differed from my first tree. Somebody innocently mentions the word 'tree,' and you and I believe we have an idea of what she meant. Each of us imagines a different tree, and we could bombard each other with descriptions for days without success: we shall never get a congruent image of the other person's tree into our head.

Trees or chairs are relatively easy to communicate about. Tangibles are child's play compared with more complex subjects such as peace, love, freedom, or the existence and consistency of a soul. Good thing that I don't bother maintaining one. A soul that is. I don't even care for peace or love, but that is a separate story.

It is practically impossible for two people to agree on a precise definition of 'love' or 'God.' What is torture, for instance, and what is not? After half a decade of heated debates we aren't closer to agreement, are we?

Giving up the idea of finding your damn soul mate or someone who truly understands you can relieve you of the tension you were trying to eliminate by trying hard to meet understanding friends. I have felt most lonely while I was surrounded by dear friends, and I have felt outright deserted in the midst of family.

You can only discover, express, and enjoy your kind of freedom alone. Don't be so dense: of course you can be close to great individuals, but you'll never cross the chasm of individuality. Between individuals there can't be understanding. I shall never know you.

Dopey Hope No. 3: "One beautiful day the world will be as desired and all my insipid wishes will come true."

Not!

By the way, do you know what people hate most about the markets? The fact that markets behave as unpredictably as the world does. The notion that free markets don't work is as absurd and feeble minded as the idea that reality must be wrong.

"The world"--our collective experience of planet earth and your personal reality--will never be as neatly organized and pleasant as we wish for it to turn out. It matters not how many cutesy treasure maps the faithful Claw-of-Attraction dorks will nail to their bedroom walls. Even Hitler tried that and failed miserably.

You will never like your present day in its entirety, your future, or your past. And if you can be happy with the rosy parts of reality only, you are doomed to a dull existence, baby. Happiness about everything going according to your plan is for greenhorns. Gathering positive events in your life and trying to eliminate more of the negative stuff is a zero sum game.

Positive thinkering is maxed out. You won't prevent a quarter of a billion annual Malaria infections by thinking "good" thoughts and Malaria won't become more palatable by "seeing the glass half full." If your teenage son happens to impregnate your neighbor's 16-year old daughter--The Secret this or The Secret that--you won't like it one bit.

Conditional happiness is a setup for depression. "I am willing to be happy only if and when X occurs." Well, good luck with that! Why would you want to deprive yourself of happiness between highly improbable events? Are you so superstitious that you believe your self-chosen misery will convince the universe to have mercy with your rotten soul? You think sacrificing your happiness will guarantee better circumstances for your future?

If you are not happy, you have made a childish deal with the universe: "Dear universe, if you provide me with XYZ eventually, I am willing to be miserable in exchange meanwhile." People literally choose misery now to be happy later. It's pathetic.

I know I am exaggerating. I am wrong. It's not true. I lied. Funny species that we are, we can't be that droll ... or can we?

Your life's circumstances will rarely be conducive to prolonged happiness. If you care to be happy, you must pry it out of the iron grip of daily adversity. You must shorten your bitch lag!

Say wha ...?

Bitch lag.

There it is. The happy-maker par excellence.

Bitch lag is the time it takes to regain your composure, your productivity, and your happiness--after a disruptive unpleasant event triggered you to complain about reality.

We are useless while we're bitching about our lot. We are not making money and we're not aware how much fun we are having. But we are having fun indeed while we are locked in complaining mode. In fact, bitching about the world animates us so that we could go on for hours. Honestly, you don't want to defend the position that hating event X in your life is an expression of misery, or do you?

Bitching is bitching. We love it!

When things go wrong in our lives, when we are upset, pissed off, and red-faced in glowing anger: we are in our element. That, too, is happiness. Unadulterated ecstasy. We enjoy the crap in our lives more than we do its lame positive sides. Gets the blood pressure going.

You cannot expand your happiness by by increasing the nice and pink stuff. That's ninny theory. Leave The Secret and mind numbingly boring self-improvement to the baby boomers. Hardcore happiness wants to be experienced around the clock and because they don't have access to it, the baby boomers can't be weened off their weed.

I am not interested in inhaling five minutes of happiness on weekends. I want all of it all the time, or nothing! So can you. And damned, it's free!

Zero bitch lag: you realize you're bitching about something and--Bingo!--you are there. THAT is your current expression of ecstasy.

Reality sucks once-in-a-while for everyone of us. So what? Exploit it, all of it, for fun and profit. And you'll have one hell of a grand time.

Egbert

P.S.: Have you bought my book yet? No? Geez, pick it up at http://moneybymistake.com