Happiness

The concept of “happiness” is incredibly vague. The term gets thrown around so often, and I’m never sure what it means when people say it. Even when I personally use the word, something usually feels off. Generally, the concept of it seems interchangeable with “good.” We tend to divide up time and label it as good or bad: “I had a good day today.” Or: “It’s been a really terrible year.” We also like to indicate progress in our lives by evaluating our place on the happiness scale, for instance: “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.” Or: “That summer was the happiest time of my life.” Joyous, ecstatic, content, peaceful, excited, eager, enthusiastic – these are all words that get clumped under the “happiness” umbrella from time to time. To say, “I am so happy” could mean any of these more specific things, and a lot of other things, too. It implies that there are more pleasant, as opposed to unpleasant, emotions, or that the pleasant emotions are sufficient to make it worth it for us to endure the unpleasant stuff.

I can honestly say that I’m not “happy” all that often. Not because I’m a miserable, depressed person, but simply because I’m human. I experience a lot of that infamous unpleasant stuff on a daily basis (fear, jealousy, grief, guilt, discomfort, awkwardness, disappointment, embarrassment, shame, and regret – to name a few). I’ve always had a vague notion in the back of my mind that happiness is the goal of my entire life. If things aren’t going right for me, I might say that I “just don’t feel happy anymore.” If I set myself on a different life trajectory, it’s because, “I think that this new aspiration will make me happy.”

Chasing an Illusion

I’ve always loved the idea of going uphill today so that I can go downhill tomorrow. I’m a “save the best for last” kind of gal. I have this idea, somewhere in my gut, that life will get easier in time. I’m not sure why I believe this. All evidence exists to the contrary. As time goes on, I will age. I will have less energy. I will have more health problems. I may be escorted off of this planet by a crippling disease in old age (and that’s a better scenario than most others). I will lose more and more people that are dear to me. I will experience more heartache, in various forms. I will rack up more disappointments and regrets, inevitably. My struggles will likely be harder and more complex, as I get older. There’s a chance that I’ll have more money, or greater assets (assuming that they don’t get wiped out by an economic crash), but it’s not a certainty. In terms of simple ease of living, the outlook isn’t great for things to be an easy ride here on out. Why do we look for an end-point for pain? The bad news is: there’s no such endpoint (death is debatable, but I’m referring to the living years). On a large scale, that’s obvious. On a small scale, I think we’re all hoping that, as we age, we become better able to deal with life and make the most of it. This translates into small hopes: “I want to have a better day today than yesterday.” That’s a more realistic ambition than the secret idea that someday pain will end, or be substantially less piercing.

It’s been difficult for me to accept that there are very few purely “great” days. There may be a few, just like there are a few abominably horrendous days. Most days, though, force me to deal with any number of cycling emotions. One minute, I may experience a moment of genuine peace, and the next moment will send me into crippling inner turmoil. Sometimes, an unpleasant feeling will get triggered by the smallest, most seemingly insignificant thing. A side comment from a friend, a spurt of anxiety about the future, a slow, relentless burn of envy – before I know it, I’ve got a knot in my stomach and a weight on my chest without even knowing how it happened. Often, I have to stop for a minute, backtrack, and try to figure out how my bad mood suddenly swirled up and took over. Even for those of us that don’t get branded as “bipolar,” mood shifts are inevitable and CONSTANT. I want the bad moods to stay away, and I want the good moods to come more frequently. But my moods simply don’t respond to pressure. They’re going to make a space for themselves in my heart, and I can either accept them as is or deny the fact that they’re there. In truth, our experience in any given year, month, week, or day can’t be classified as purely “good” or “bad.” There’s too much change going on within our emotional worlds – at all times. There are so many external and internal stimuli – it’s impossible not to be affected by it. Even if I’m sitting on a beach, with palm trees waving in the distance and a good looking man is bringing me pina colada’s – I guarantee that my mind will, at some point, think about something that triggers sadness in me, in some capacity.

I think it’s very revealing that we all find hope in a fresh start, no matter how good the previous experience was. No matter how many fantastic things happened to me in any given year, I always hold out hope for even better things in the next year. I always enjoy figuring out how to improve my life. It gives me a tremendous sense of anticipation, and that feeling wouldn’t be so universally powerful if we all didn’t experience daily struggles that make our lives a painful, rough ride, in part. We always want things to improve. To me, this means that no one is ever purely happy in any long-term time interval (certainly not for an entire year, or month, or week – I even question whether or not pure happiness is possible for a full day). We all feel that our lives could be improved exponentially. Even if, objectively, you have everything you want – you can’t elude pain in the long run. Part of getting what you want is losing things you love, or fearing that eventual loss. Like it or not, we’re all subject to crippling loss and a horrible turn of events that force us out of our contentment. If somehow, everything IS miraculously perfect for you, it won’t always be this way.

What does it mean, then, to wish for happiness, when everything is so mixed up all the time and mortal life guarantees loss?

Equal Acceptance of Pain and Pleasure

Happiness as a general, steady state of being, is a false idea. But happy moments are not. The only thing that’s ever helped me long term is to acknowledge and accept the entirety of my experience, no matter what it is. Earlier in my life, I think I had a strong reaction against a conscious commitment to positive thinking. It seemed like denial to me, and so I emphasized the bad OVER the good as an act of rebellion. Teenagers, in general, seem more apt to be brutally honest about their everyday experience. “Well, that really sucked” or “This is awkward” were common pronouncements made by teenage Frankie and her peers. Sometimes when I overhear a group of teens talking now, I feel almost envious of their candor. They really lay it out on the table. There can be a huge sense of relief that comes with that honesty. It cuts through the unpleasant feelings and turns them into a source of comedy or simply something to commiserate about. I still have a bristly reaction whenever I sense that someone is glossing over her pain. I’ve often heard people say that they don’t like hearing “depressing” stories because such stories are “downers.” I’ve felt this way before too. I’ve resisted someone’s sad tale because it seems to intrude on my buoyant mood. What I’m missing in those instances is the acceptance of those moods as fluid, changeable, and in flux. When I’m feeling bad, I’m eager to get distracted from the mood – as though I can eliminate it. When I’m feeling good, I sometimes feel protective of the mood, as though I can preserve it by putting up barriers to sadness. The fact is that if something wipes away my great mood, then trying to hang onto it by not listening to someone’s sad story won’t work. The mood was never here to stay, anyway and as soon as I feel the need to get it back, it’s already gone. We’re all surrounded by people, all the time, experiencing a variety of emotions. Sometimes good emotions will rub off on us, and sometimes bad emotions will, too. That’s part of it. We’re all in this together, and we affect each other. That fact garners a lot of wonderful stuff, and it also creates some painful experiences. Guarding happiness jealously is like trying to capture air and hold it in your hands. It’s completely counterproductive and fruitless.

The other part of it is knowing that excessive complaining and overemphasizing the bad to the exclusion of all the small, but sustaining, wonderful moments is equally as fruitless. A goal of consistent happiness is a wild goose chase, but a failure to acknowledge pleasant experience when it arises is to deny yourself almost all the pleasant experience in life. I sincerely believe that the subtle, daily shifts and turns of joy, pain, laughter, tearfulness, excitement, and sorrow are the meat of life. It’s an ongoing, everyday patchwork of different emotion that adds up to our overall experience. I’ve never successfully planned for happiness or forcefully carved it out by delineating it from “bad” stuff. Even if, for example, I go on a highly anticipated vacation, I will experience a lot of shifts within that vacation. I may feel tired, frustrated, or confused one minute, and the next minute I will see something that fascinates me and awakens my sense of excitement. It’s all in flux. How many times have I held back tears, telling myself that I’ll “let it out later,” but when “later” arrives, the tears are nowhere to be found? How many times have I decided to go out and have a great time only to wind up feeling lonely and isolated in spite of the fact that I’m surrounded by a lively, cheerful atmosphere?

I think some people resist the idea that our moods are uncontrollable because it seems so dire. What’s the point then in engaging in specific actions designed to make us “happier”? It’s obvious that certain life conditions are more conducive to happiness than others, and it’s completely natural to move towards those conditions. If I have a job that I enjoy, then I will undoubtedly experience more pleasant emotion than if I have a job that I hate. My only point is that, even within the best-case scenario, our minute-by-minute experience will be highly varied, and we will struggle with a lot of difficult stuff. No one has ever “gotten what they wanted” and then said, “oh hey, I’m done. I don’t have to worry about anything else again. Ever.” In light of this fact, the only conclusion is that happiness is not an ultimate goal at the end of a road of hardship. It’s merely a part of our experience from birth to death. It’s entirely possible to increase the number of “happy” moments in various ways, but the road to doing so will always be fraught with a lot of unhappiness. And the achievement of more happiness will NEVER eliminate unpleasantness. Everything will cycle back and forth between pleasant and unpleasant, relentlessly. We can pointlessly resist this mixed bag that we’re given, or we can accept it and work through it as best we can.

Keep Going

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a shift in the way that I summarize my life experiences when conversing with others. In contrast to my angsty, teenage days, I’m now more likely to give a balanced description of events. I emphasize the good AND the bad, but I usually conclude my stories on a positive, hopeful note. Maybe I just do it to be more accepted by people or to live in a rosy delusion of optimism. But I think I do it as a way to say: “life is hard, but it’s got its plusses, too. It’s worth it somehow. I’m going to keep trying.” I hear other people doing the same thing, as we get older. It’s as though we’re all saying to each other: “it’s ok. Keep going. We’re all going to be ok.” Every time I don’t burst at the seems from painful emotions, it gives me greater confidence that I can get through similar events down the road.

Harriet Tubman said this, while helping slaves to escape through the Underground Railroad:

"If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going."

It gives me chills every time I read that statement and think about the incredibly brave individuals that were running, with no guarantee of a positive outcome, even if they DID escape. They kept going regardless of what they encountered or feared. “Freedom” to the slaves was literal freedom from physical enslavement. But, we could all stand to feel more free. A large part of freedom, for me, is the ability to accept myself, my experience, and my emotions for what they are. It’s being confident in my ability to emotionally make it through whatever comes my way, no matter what happens to me. It’s enduring the fear of losing the good stuff. It’s knowing that, minute by minute, the point isn’t always to be gloriously happy. The point is simply to “be” and allow my life to unfold, while trying and working and growing and experiencing all of it, with no barriers.

Articles Related to 'Happiness'