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January 04, 2004
pursuit of happiness
i've had several conversations with friends about the pursuit of happiness lately. i had the luxury of meeting up with my friend ariel recently and we ended up in a discussion about her writings and how they might be organized, which led to an exchange how her perspective tends to be misinterpreted as overly positive. if there is such a thing.
the conversation subsequently turned toward the observation about how we live our lives and experience joy, in direct correlation to our understanding of suffering.
she described a woman she knows that has led a fairly positive life, great family, fulfilling marriage, financial stability, and yet this woman still manages to infuse her daily life with a tremendous amount of self-inflicted worry, complaining and unhappiness. the assertion was that we, have a need to "balance" our lives with a corresponding level of unhappiness to compensate for our good fortune. and vice versa.
while i believe that this is fundamentally true, i also suspect that in this assertion the element of choice has been left out. ultimately, i believe that as humans we are incapable of a sustained state of happiness. we hope, we strive for something better. something more than what we have. this is what drives us on a daily basis to overcome the shit that life throws our way, and also creates our common sense of "if this is good, then more is better" mentality.
a friend forwarded an article to me today about a psychologist that studies "happiness" and our pursuit of such. i found this article interesting, but also (like many "studies") predictable.
it suggests that we are, as humans, capable of extraordinary adaptability. that when asked to choose between some kind of hypothetical misfortune and another, we not only make incredibly short-sighted selections, we grossly underestimate our capacity to survive, and in fact thrive, in the face of a particular adversity.
anyone who has experienced great hardship, learns that we are far more capable of surviving than we might have ever imagined. and through this adversity, often find that happiness is not in what we achieve, nor in what we posess, but in our capacity to appreciate what we have at this very moment.
i had another friend who told me once that he would never place his faith in anything that could be lost easily. to never count on money, looks, security, health or the "bright and shiny shit" to offer lasting contentedness. and i found this to be sage advice, until i learned that just about anything can be lost in an instant.
through the last few years, through a bit of rough treatment by the universe, i found that the only thing we can control, is our reaction to any given event. that we have a choice. our happiness directly correlates to our understanding of suffering. but that this happiness is also a choice. how we intrerpret and learn from our experience. i suspect that the only thing that might offer lasting satisfaction is borne of our ability to choose who and what we love. how we spend our time and the value we accord it.
and if we mistakenly expect that there is someone, or something, that will fill this void, or become a salve for our dissatisfaction, then we are ultimately doomed to a lifetime of misery.
but more importantly, i suspect that because we are naturally inclined to balance our suffering or good fortune with its natural counterpart, it becomes more important to understand the element of choice in this equation.
i'm not sure that i've totally made up my mind on this, because perhaps in the face of great hardship we can only adapt and survive because we have no choice. but i'm not sure this thinking accounts for all of the miserable, depressed folks that have given over to their hardship nor the incredibly happy, seemingly oblivous, people i've run across over the years.
either way, i'll continue to plod on in my pursuit.
Posted by heidijanet at January 4, 2004 11:11 PM
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Comments
Beautifully put!
Most of us never change until it is too painful not to.
We find ourselves going through the "downs' because we have not achieved enlightenment yet. We'd probably not still be here if we had.
Posted by: Mom at January 7, 2004 09:12 PM
Dead on, Heidi. Funny enough, I wrote an entry about this just before I read it, but it concerns the positive aspects - accepting the good and bad that you speak of, and choosing to look at the bad as potentially good, or leading to something good.
Perception is everything.
Beautiful writing.
Posted by: Ryan at January 10, 2004 01:08 AM
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