Happiness is…

do you
Drawing by Adrian Serghie

Those are some very interesting dots because they represent different things for different people. For some it’s a fat bank account, for others it’s a walk into the nature. Happiness is a journey, a destination and a forbidden word. It’s everything and nothing. For some it’s sweat and pain towards something whilst for others it’s avoiding them.

You see, we’re all hungry for happiness and sometimes we don’t even know what that is. We see some things at other people and we see that they might seem happy, and that increases our hunger. But is it really that what we want? Are we in a search for the things that make others happy because we think they’ll have the same effect on us? We might end up in the having point.

I wonder a lot about this happiness “thing” since it causes so many problems for so many people. I might even say that the negative emotions are not even negative. It might be just a lack of happiness. So what are we actually in a search for? I guess we just want to feel good about ourselves and about our life regardless what can bring that. The things we do or we say are actually oriented to make ourselves feel good or to avoid making things bad, which is still good (in the first month after this blog’s creation, I came up with a “theory” called the pleasure and fear theory, which is based on the idea that we’re in a search for pleasure or we’re in a search to avoid punishment.)

If we go deeper, we’ll realize that we see happiness as a destination. How many times you’ve told yourself “I’ll be happy when…”? But what is actually stopping us from being happy right now? And as always, the answer is our perspective. Yes, people die, banks take homes, diseases kick in and s*it like that, but why should pain eliminate happiness? It’s normal to cry and it’s normal to laugh. Maybe we all need a default state of being grateful that nothing worse happened and I’m sure you know that it can always be worse.

Maybe we’re “not allowed” to be happy because we continuously compare ourselves with people that don’t have the problems we have. However, they probably have other problems. Everybody has problems and that’s one of the few things that last forever. But who wants problems? No one… and still… everybody has those.

   For you happiness is…?

28 thoughts on “Happiness is…

  1. Well-written

    On Sat, 4 May 2019 at 13:30, Pointless Overthinking wrote:

    > Bogdan (DM) posted: ” Those are some very interesting dots because they > represent different things for different people. For some it’s a fat bank > account, for others it’s a walk into the nature. Happiness is a journey, a > destination and a forbidden word. It’s everything and ” >

  2. I try not to think about this subject too much, but I would have to say that happiness for me is quite simply the lack of sadness. Work on overcoming your sorrows and not so much obtaining happiness.

  3. I think… The last time I was actually happy and able to enjoy my life was when I was in my univesity period. Either I miss the joy of studying, hang out with friends, or simply because I had a chance to live independently…

    But for now, I know one thing that does not make me really happy; I’m tied with my parents and they don’t really allow me to explore myself further. I may be blaming to some extent, but I feel like I can’t really grow because they just won’t let me and I just realized it now for these past few years…

      1. For now I just need to try my hardest to find a job so I can live independently. I don’t want to rely on them anymore not only because I feel bad about still depending on them financially but also because I don’t wanna be tied down and controlled by them. I don’t want to always feel bad not to do what they want me to because that is not what I want. We all have our own life and eventually we will be no longer able to depend on our parents, right?

  4. interesting thought! i have read somewhere that happiness is a byproduct of usefulness. it says that the ultimate purpose of life is to be useful, and with that, we become happy because we are able to help – whether it is you or towards others; and that happiness is not the destination. and it resonates with me so much that i’ve been living with the idea eversince i’ve gotten the change to read about it.

      1. oh being used as in being taken for granted ain’t it. it’s being useful as in serving your puspose. but that’s totally understandable. i just love setting obligations and expectations on myself ahaha we all live differently anyway 🙂

      2. Yes, you are right. Everybody is different.
        But I think self worth / esteem should not be dependent on performance or achievements.
        I known people who prefer to be busy around the clock bcs they cannot bear it to be alone or to have time with themselves. It looks like they are on a escape.

      3. Oh yeah, definitely. Tho there are people who are busy round the clocks because they have to; not that they want to. And I know everyone is still taking a chapter break once in a while. We can only do so much 🙂

    1. Very interesting! I’ve also heard that the ultimate purpose of life is to be useful, but there are so many people useful, but they are unhappy. I guess it’s because the way they’re useful is not the way they would like to be useful…

  5. I must say that I enjoy your posts, and this one is no different.
    I support the notion of time being taken as a destination. I strongly believe most of us fail to experience “happiness” cause we’ve been somewhat precondition to see happiness as a task not an experience.

    But I also think that most of us interpret “content” and “happy” interchangeably. Which reflects our definition of happy as a void that needs to be filled.

    1. Thank you very much for reading and for your kind words! Lately, happiness is in every people’s bucket list, but it is treated as a destination…

  6. Happiness is to have my own ultimate purpose in life and is when I am on my way to follow it. Sometimes there are obstacles and negative emotions along the way but those are also parts of happiness 🙂

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