Chasing The Dragon
What is happiness?
Is it being content?
is it being in a good mood?
is it being secure?
is it all of these things combined?
Is it getting what you want?
Is it a sense of accomplishment?
Is it success?
Is it learning?
Is it being heroic?
Is it being generous?
Is it all of these things?
Loveawake blog wrote an interesting article over at his site about chasing happiness, and how it turns into a fools errands as your sense of what will make you happy will shift as you accomplish what you had once thought would make you happy. And he’s correct, as human’s this tends to happen – at the same time, as humans, we are pretty bad at being humans. Meaning, we aren’t very good at actually understanding what life is all about. The meaning of life, etc etc.
Very few of us actually question what happiness really is. Most of us think certain things will make us happy, but we get caught up in emotional peaks and valleys, we get stuck on highs – some maintain a constant state of equilibrium, some are always down – all would probably give you the same answer to the question, are you happy? Usually it results in no (although not everyone would admit this answer publicly – for saying you’re unhappy, makes one appear weak or disempowered).
Some say happiness is a personal thing, what will make you happy may not make me happy. This is true on the surface, what pleases me, what i take pleasure in and enjoyment from, is certainly going to be unique to ones own quirks an interests and desires. But is happiness really just a fullfilling of desires? If so, why do we all suddenly get more desires as soon as we fullfill our desires that sometimes even made us obsessive?
Again, we need to ask what is actual happiness? I’ve known people, and I myself for an extended period of time have been always in a good mood, up beat, lots of energy, things went my way all the time, hell in life things have really been fairly easy for me, the odd time I do actually exert any effort usually produces even better results, but, hey I’m content to do things that are on the path of least resistance, since things generally always work out for me, so why change? Is this happiness? Is it energy? Being positive? I think there is many dissadvantages to living through life like this, you’re more likely to put yourself into dangerous situations by denying base emotional reactions like fear, doubt, etc. You are also less likely to be driven to do anythng worth while, thus dulling your character and your mind. Left to your own devices one might fail to survive. So is this actual happiness?
We have a culture that is obsessed with being happy, it gave birth to the Political Correct Police State because we can’t make anyone feel bad in our lives, we all deserve happiness. But again, do we even really know what that means? Can we even mutually agree on a definition of happiness?
Part of what makes our society seem so schizophrenic is this ambition to reach happiness. I beleive that what we think of happiness is much like paradise, a fantasy where we beleive we can get to, if we just do the right things, what’s neccessary to obtain it. Happiness seems fleeting because it doesn’t exist. Our moods can be happy, we can be happy and joyous in a moment, we can live good enjoyable lives with lots of things that make us feel proud, good and worthy. But that’s not happiness. Is it? If it is, in the sense that we all subconciously define it, why does said life lose it’s luster, it’s capacity to make us feel good, once we have lived it for just a bit too long?
Chasing happiness is just like chasing the dragon, we will destroy more peoples lives in our lust for finding the white whale that would undermine our actual hypothetical happiness, and we’ll keep chasing the tail over and over again, without ever attaining it.
Eventually as a species we may perhaps emotionally and mentally evolve out of this child like state. But we probably won’t, and we’ll all keep pursuing our happiness with little regard to mayhem it may or may not cause around us.
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