The more details we discover about another person's life, the clearer it becomes that other people have at least as much adversity to deal with as we do. Some individuals appear exceptionally lucky on first sight, before we learn about the heavy burdens they are carrying. Nobody's life is free of challenges and pain. Every single human being has plenty of reasons not to be happy.
There it is: if you are not as happy as you wish to be, it is because feeling awful makes more sense. Is being miserable logical? Is the absence of happiness a natural function of nasty, happiness-smothering circumstances?
A vicious circle of desire keeps us from enjoying life as intensely as we could. For instance, we wish to be happy and we want to make money, but instead we develop weird habits of exclusive thinking:
Large percentages of the population think that they cannot be happy while being at work. Hence making money excludes happiness, and being happy excludes making money. We want both, but we're making damn sure that it won't occur. We can't handle both simultaneously. Our ability to multi-task is rather limited.
Combining the two appears nearly impossible. Work is not supposed to be fun. If it's too enjoyable it can't be that hard and if our work lacks hardship, its perceived monetary value drops to levels of insignificance.
People are afraid of having too much fun at work. When that happens--and we're happy on the job despite our intentions to suffer for money--feelings of guilt can kick in swiftly.
Our belief in sweat equity is similar to blood sacrifices of ancient cultures. Of course we don't kill the annual virgin to persuade our gods that we deserve a decent crop. Nevertheless, we are a superstitious bunch. How else do you explain the unwillingness to abandon human sacrifices?
People trade their lives for a house. Individuality is easily surrendered in exchange for our brats' education and for comfort. Right, we pay for comfort with emotional and physical discomfort. Pain is a common currency for the purchase of luxury and highly questionable symbols. Cars are often seen as symbols of freedom and mobility, and we're willing to relinquish true freedom to do what we want in exchange for $1,000 rims and an iPhone.
Symbols of freedom and happiness can be more important than raw freedom and happiness. After all, we are sophisticated people and we prefer freedom secondhand.
The idea that fun and enjoyment may be valuable commodities or even capable of producing money seems absurd. Can't we work our behinds off WHILE we are happy? Can you?
Imaginary lists lurk around our heads, lists of potential happy makers, 'Happy Lists,' and lists of events with supposedly depressing character, 'Unhappy Lists.'
Money--preferably lots of it--appears in prominent positions on people's list of happiness causing events. Restored health, grandchildren, vacations, completion of education and other projects, world peace, a lower tax burden, raises, marriage, divorce, a day of sunshine, or a good deal--almost anything can serve at one time or another to sucker us into the belief that we'll be happier once X has happened.
The majority of lottery winners eventually experiences the undoing of their pre-jackpot lives, yet the unlikely occasion of winning the lottery remains on many people's Happy Lists.
Children are on plenty of Happy Lists, but will children “make" you happy by definition? Unloading responsibility for your happiness onto the small shoulders of your kids—born or unborn—would be an unspeakable cruelty. We may experience an abundance of happy times with children, but the inhumane expectation that your offspring owes you an increase of your personal happiness will be punished by the universe. Trust me.
Childless individuals often believe with children they would be happier. I know of parents who think without children they could have been happier. We are nuts.
Divorce is on the average Unhappy List. Wish lists and LOA treasure maps don't usually include divorces. “Oh, I want to meet a nice man and share a devastating and humiliating divorce with him.” Bizarre? Surprisingly, approximately half of those who get married will look forward to their divorce sooner or later. Indeed, divorces can make us happy or at least they may lead us back to the road toward happiness.
Birthdays appear on Happy Lists, cancer commonly on Unhappy Lists. Gout, death, repair bills, or a cleft lip: Unhappy List. Beer, tax hikes, celibacy? Depends on you.
"Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power, and heroics are as naive as the child who tries to catch a rainbow and wear it as a coat." --Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche
No, that does not mean you should make do without pleasure, wealth, or power! Mr. Rinpoche doesn't say anything against having fun or the acquisition of cash per se. But he is correct: to seek ecstasy in the warm and fuzzy, in the cracks of the notoriously positive, is as limited as it is hopelessly immature. If the good is "making" you happy and the bad is "causing" unhappy feelings, negative experiences will cancel out happiness and on average your life will trickle away at an emotional level of plus/minus zero.
Being happy when life goes well and complaining when the going gets tough is not that creative, or is it? Happiness cannot expand without venturing out into hostile territory, the dark and the negative. Every 4-year old knows that fun is fun. Duh. The real challenge is to connect the dots between happiness and the common cold, between cancer and ecstasy, or to respond to an impertinent boss with boundless lust for work!
Forget the new age rubbish, the brain-phlegm coughed up by recycled dork religions: "there is a positive side to everything," or that smug "what is this pain teaching you?" No, no, no--that is not happiness. It's a miserable wretch grasping for that last straw of meaning to hold on to, a nanosecond before filing for intellectual bankruptcy.
I am not asking you to prospect for kernels of wisdom in negative experiences. The negative, the reprehensible, or the outright painful is indeed ugly and I don't suggest you cover it up with a mountain of fudge. The last thing on my mind is peddling positive thinking.
But: Even ugly experiences can be lived with style, excitement, and passion!
If you need help entering your form of ecstasy when you are facing one of life's less than desirable surprises, I am happy to teach you for a hefty fee. Yet I don't believe that's necessary. Why?
We are naturally born happy entities!
You don't need to teach 2-year olds how to be happy. They know how it works. From then on people learn how to not be happy. We have learned what we can gain with misery and what we forgo by being happy too often. And ecstasy is an absolut no-no. Makes you look crazy.
What am I talking about? When you are unhappy, you get attention. We knew how to milk that before we could speak. Being unhappy increases a person's perceived importance. Others latch on with there own problems or they are compelled to help. At the very least, individuals feel compassion with the unhappy. Unhappy fellows are considered deeper, more sophisticated, and thoughtful.
Being unhappy puts you in a control position! A superior angrily barking at his subjects gets immediate respect and more so than a boss who invites you to be merry and to join his ecstatic dance around his desk.
Happiness is suspect! We hate pain and misery, but we're not as scared of it as we are opposed to ecstasy. True happiness is associated with loss of control and must be avoided at all times. People don't even laugh uncontrollably because they are afraid how others may judge them.
Overtly happy people are an embarrassing sight. They are shallow freaks. They cause jealousy and resentment quickly. The happy person obviously doesn't control himself and neither do we expect that he can control others if necessary. You cannot trust a happy man. You want power? Forget being happy!
Everybody knows how to be happy at all times. If and when we aren't, we are scheming. Misery is artificial and those feigning it have ulterior motives. The unhappy person takes the feelings of the few happy freaks hostage. Unhappiness works by way of extortion.
When you are unhappy, you are intent to control your human environment by intimidation. And damned, it often works and we permit misery to bully our happiness into a tiny corner. Twice a month--maybe--at night, in bed, in the dark, when hardly anyone notices we are willing to be happy for 10 seconds.
Pathetic.
Never again trust unhappy people! And that includes an unhappy moody you.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: That should not stop you from buying my damn book. So? What are you waiting for?!
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