This is the first time I write about happiness but I am sure it is not going to be the last. Happiness has been a popular term in our society for hundreds of years and people have always searched for it. We are born with a desire to maximize our pleasure and being in a state of eternal pleasure is very appealing to us. Most of the literature I read on the subject says that eternal happiness is something you can never achieve, it’s like a Chimera, you catch it for a short period of time and then it disappears. And I have verified this numerous times throughout my life. I searched for material things and experiences that brought me pleasure and happiness but after a while they either disappeared or I got used to them and the thrill vanished. Then, I was forced to search for new things and it’s like a vicious circle that verifies the hypothesis: lasting happiness is something we can never achieve.
And after a long period of struggle, I realized during the past year that I have got it all wrong. I discovered that the search for happiness should not take place outside of me, but inside.
Our society teaches us that happiness is not our natural state and we need to find things that bring it in our life. But is that true?
Think for a second at little children: they do not need much to be happy. As long as they are healthy and fed, they do not need anything else. They do not need expensive toys, they can make a toy out of anything, and they are joyful and they laugh for no reason. However this changes with age and I think it changes when they begin to learn fear, guilt or worthlessness. And the more they learn these negative feelings the more unhappy they become. And after a while they become the unhappy adults that are searching for happiness and never seem to grasp it.
The way I see it, we are born happy, we have happiness within us, it is not something to search for outside. We only need to erase the negative feelings and let it glow. When we are searching for happiness outside of us, we are trying to find things that should compensate for the negative feelings. We find them for a short while, but the external pleasures just make us forget the negative feelings and after a while, when the magic has passed, we are left the same as before. And we are obliged to search for new, even greater pleasures. It now makes sense why happiness is so elusive. It also makes sense how some people become trapped in the vicious circle of happiness: they search for joyful experiences to compensate guilt but the experiences make them feel even guiltier and they need to increase the pleasure dose to cover the ever increasing guilt.
The good thing is that the negative feelings we learned as children can be unlearned. Unfortunately, it is not always obvious and it is never easy. Why?
- First of all because most of us have lived like this ever since we can remember, so how could we know that there is a better state of mind than the one we already have? When we see happy people we just think that they were luckier than us and there is nothing we can do about it.
- And, secondly, because unhappiness is a habit and as with any habit it is not easy to change, we need to put effort and time into it.
But if we are determined enough, we can change and we can bring back the childhood joy.
We just need to remember that happiness is a choice; it does not depend on the external factors but on us, on our thoughts and attitudes. No matter what life throws at us, it is our choice if we let it bring us down or we keep our positive state of mind.
