Happiness is a trap. Over the past four decades happiness has become the singular outcome that defines a good life. The sole purpose of life seems to be to feel nothing but happy. And negative emotions have become a sign that we are falling short of leading good and fulfilling lives. If you aren’t constantly happy there is something wrong – and there is a high likelihood that there is something wrong with you.
When we place too much emphasis on happiness negative emotions and experiences become signals of failure. The more we believe we’re failing, the more we ruminate on what we’re doing wrong. And the more we focus on our so-called ‘failures’ the greater the negative emotions we experience. Which, ironically, make happiness all the more difficult to attain.
Feelings are poor representations of a person’s identity
We have a complicated relationship with our feelings. We hold ourselves responsible for what we feel and we believe that what we feel is who we are. To me this is a strange idea. If I feel angry or sad, my definition of who I am changes; who I am is now happy or sad. However, the feelings we use to define ourselves only seem to relate are few and quite random. In fact, we seem to define ourselves and who we are with a small handful of feelings. We may either be:
- an angry person
- a happy person
- a sad person
- an excitable person
- a highly strung or stressed person
Now, consider when we’re bored, which is also a feeling. We don’t become a ‘boring or bored’ person in those moments of boredom. We just are… bored. For some inexplicable reason, we allow ourselves to see this as a state we’re in momentarily; it is something we can change – usually by taking out our phones.
It is also worth considering what happens when our labels don’t align with our emotional state. Let’s say I consider myself to be a ‘sad person’ and by some twist of fate I experience an intense moment of joy, do I cherish that joy more, do I revel in that moment?
No.
Instead I don’t trust the feeling. I know that the experience will be short lived and I look for any opportunity to adopt my state of sadness again.
Feelings are blunt instruments
We can’t be held responsible for what we feel. Feelings at the end of the day are just interpretations of emotions we experience. Emotions are bodily experiences that stem from our amygdala. Feelings are the conscious experience of those emotions. To put it another way, emotions are the letters and words on the page, feelings are the story those words tell.
We have very little control over how our our body responds to what happens to us (emotions). And how we interpret our bodily responses (feelings) are based on memories, personal experiences, beliefs, and thoughts linked to that particular emotion. Factors that are also incredibly difficult to change.
What we feel isn’t a reflection of our life and has very little to do with the reality we experience. Feelings are blunt and loud. They are as good at describing life as grunts are at describing a sunset.
We need to stop running blindly after happiness. Instead, we should enjoy happiness when we have it and accept that it won’t be there forever. Similarly, pain will come into our lives, and it will leave when it is time. And both are there to remind us that we are part of the world, part of something bigger than ourselves. Nothing more. Feelings should not be used as a gauge for how well our lives are going.
Life is brief, nothingness is eternal
Our lives are bookended by oblivion. At the end of our lives our consciousness is extinguished and the point of light that is us, that exists somewhere behind everything we see and experience, fades into the background of everything else, which is mostly nothingness. And if nothingness is what awaits us, the state we return to after this life ends, then while I have this thing called consciousness I should use it to experience as much as I can.
And for this reason we shouldn’t see positive experiences and emotions as more valuable than negative ones. Instead, we should attempt to see all experiences as opportunities and decide for ourselves what our lives are about, what experiences and feelings we want or need to experience. If you want to have children, experience love, know suffering, then be grateful when these things arrive in your life. As I have said before, we need to decide for ourselves what the narrative of our lives looks like. We have to choose who we are and build a tapestry of experiences that reflects our definition of us. And from all I’ve read and experienced, life is hard, there is more sorrow than joy, more loneliness than connection, but I believe it is all worth living through so that you can know who you are.
And, despite my not believing in an afterlife, I do love the idea that somewhere our lives are exhibited in a giant supernatural art gallery where we can wander and admire who we all were and what we did with this brief moment of consciousness we call a life.