You Don't Have To Be Happy

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Happiness. Everyone wants it. But nobody gets it just enough. It’s always around the corner, yet it vanishes as soon as we pass that corner. Then, we end up running corner after corner to get it, just to realize we’ve been running in circles for a while. Maybe chasing it was not the right way to go, after all.


Duality of opposites

Everything involves opposites: day and night, hot and cold, happiness and sorrow. Heraclitus preached the unity of opposites. Contrary qualities are found in us ''as the same thing''. When you think about this, it makes a lot of sense: hot and cold are the two sides of temperature, pleasure and pain are both feelings, etc. Everything comes in opposites, so by trying to only feel pleasure and happiness, we must fail. That is because we have to get both counterparts, both opposite. What goes up must come down. Happiness comes as different from sorrow, as they are two opposites. Yet, they are also two parts of the ‘same thing’. Because no coin can be one-sided.


Fulfillment in struggles

This brings us to the question of what is worthy to be chased to live a 'good' and 'happy' life. We have to choose which struggle we are willing to put up with to be able to find what we love. Trough struggle and problem-solving, we find happiness. Choosing the struggles we want to face means we are OK putting up with the hardships that come with our lives and to our goals. If you want to be an artist but aren’t willing to put in the hours of practice and probably be broke or unrecognized for most of your life, then being a full time artist isn’t for you. You have to love, or at least be willing to put up with the struggles of your dream job to really enjoy it and be happy in it.

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” 

Joseph Campbell

Rather than looking at the positive traits of what you want to do, look at the pains of that work/hobby. If its struggles are actually enjoyable to you, then you are miles ahead of others who only looked at the positive traits of that activity. You would be in a better position to deal with the so-called “problems” because for you, they are actually fun to deal with.

This is not a claim about will power. As much as I’d love to say anyone can achieve anything through will power, you can’t. It is not a matter of pushing through ‘till you finally get what you want. The problems will not go away. Ever. Might as well find the problems you enjoy solving then.


Process over final result

 "If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects."

Albert Einstein

The true enjoyment of an activity comes a lot more from the process of doing the activity rather than from the final result of it. The process makes you proud, while the end result is more a side-reward.

Now, to illustrate this, let me ask you a very simple question. You just bought a new car. Which scenario would make you happier? First one is that you’ve worked a lot to get that car and after months of saving, you are finally able to buy it. Second, you didn’t work for it, your rich parents payed for your car. Now tell me, in which scenario would you have felt the most pride and happiness from getting that car?...

It is the process of working hard for the car made the car worthwhile, not the vehicle itself. However, if happiness were more about the result, then in both cases, the level of fulfilment and happiness you felt would have been the same because the end result was the same as well: the car. This cannot be true in most cases. Therefore, happiness must come more from the process of achieving than from actually achieving.

It’s the act of painting the canvas that brings pleasure to the artist, not to have it hanging in his living room.

The process of fulfilling what’s dear to us is what creates happiness. Just taking action towards our ideal selves makes us happy. The end result is kind of side reward. Happiness is closer to a way of life but further from an outside circumstance.



Final words

Find something you want to progress into, in which you enjoy the struggles of getting better. Find the problems you enjoy solving. Progress in an area you care about will make you feel extremely proud, happy and fulfilled. In a genuine way.

 

 “Stop trying to be happy and just be”

  Marc Manson

If you stop chasing happiness, it starts chasing you!

 

 

 


 

 



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