This is not an easy question. We are used to place this happiness into so many people and things that we might forget one essential thing: we are responsible for our own happiness. But what does this mean?
In my opinion, this means that we shouldn’t wait for someone else to make us happy. Yes, we can be happy with someone else, but this doesn’t mean that whenever we’re sad, we should wait for that someone or something to make us happy. When we’re sad, it’s easy to say that we need that thing/situation/place/person for us to be happy, but is that how things should be? If so, it means that we are unable to be happy by ourselves? “Blaming” something/someone else for our own happiness is like waiting for someone to open for us an umbrella in a rainy day. Yes, there might be someone that does it, but if there isn’t, does that mean that we can’t open one by ourselves? We should be able to open the umbrella for ourselves and after that we can open one for someone else or we can take someone under our umbrella.
I think that there are some “advantages” people take when it comes to this. Not having someone or something gives people a reason to be sad and they also pass the blame for their own sadness to someone else. Also, people think that being sad draws attention and that attention is interpreted as an act of carrying and that act of carrying is transformed into a “happiness pill”. The thought that someone might care about us gives a nice feeling, but the problem here is that once that someone’s attention disappears, the “happiness” disappears too and we go back to being sad and the circle repeats.
Also, not having enough money/cars/clothes/watches/friends etc. are used as reasons to be sad in the hope that it will draw some attention and it also spares us for not trying to do things, so being sad might also be a reason for procrastination.
There are situations where we get sad when we lose someone (like a member of our family) and that’s normal. It doesn’t mean that our happiness depends of that person. It means that we care about that person and we’re sad for losing him/her. The problem appears when we’re waiting for someone to make us happy. If we were happy before meeting that person, it’s normal for us to be sad if we lose him/her and after some time we’ll be able to be happy again, but if we were waiting for someone to make us happy, losing that person would be devastating and we’ll be sad until we’ll find for someone else to make us happy and so on.
Not being able to be happy by ourselves will create an addiction to someone and our behavior to make that person happy will have a “return” intention. This means that we’ll do nice things so the other one does nice things for us and if they don’t, we get upset and we’ll start blaming the other one that he/she doesn’t care about us the way we do about them (we “proved” it with our nice behavior). This blaming appears because if the other one doesn’t do nice things and we interpret it as not caring behavior which triggers our fear of losing that person who’s our “happiness dealer”.
All this “happiness” might be a game we created because we like to blame the others for our own suffering and because this is easy to do. It’s easy to see the negative side of everything. It’s hard to find the good in everything. It’s hard to switch your view away from the pain. It’s hard to go up and go forward if you got knocked down. It’s hard to find reasons to be happy in your actual state. It’s easier to look at the others and want what they have thinking that we’ll be happy when we’ll be having those things, but never doing anything to get those things and the main reason for this is that it’s not motivating enough to put on the effort. Let’s better stay sad because we don’t have those things, right?
I prefer the hard part. What about you?
You have some good points! Actually, this timing is good for a current situation I’m in. I’m happy until this person is near me. I know I’m allowing them to take away my happiness in those moments; while I know that’s my issue and I don’t need to do that-I don’t want them to think their behavior towards me was ok. Is anyone suffering but me-no. And so the crazy cycle goes on in my head.
Who? My banker, my tailor, my valentine maker. (Kidding) Me, myself y yo. Gratitude for what is going well in our lives is proven to increase happiness, and works for me. Limiting my expectations, for example about how many followers are enough, makes me happier too. -Rebecca
Great points, and something we should all consider!
Gravity.
A timely reminder for me. Thank you..
Feeling a little sad right now because one of my close friends has not been contacting me for the past few days. I feel that he is slowly pulling away, and I am afraid that I will lose him in my life. Living alone in a foreign country, he kind of became my security blanket, which I know is very wrong.
So, reading this now, I am reminded that my emotional well-being doesn’t depend on him or anyone else. I have to be strong and happy on my own if I am to survive living far away from home. He is just a friend, and should not be the person who has to carry my emotional baggage. I carry my own.
“it’s easier to look at the others and want what they have thinking that we’ll be happy when we’ll be having those things…” This really applies so much to many situations. I think if people stop comparing, they’d be much happier. ‘Fine if it’d for motivation but most cases people twist it into envy and one just has more to weigh them down.
All what you said is true, but sometimes circumstances and expectations become the bigger challenger !
A quick inference of the post.
Why is happiness something that someone or something needs to be responsible for? It’s a feeling, like feeling cold or needing to sneeze. Sometimes people feel it, sometimes they don’t. Some people feel it more often than others.
Enjoy the feeling when it happens, but don’t worry about when it doesn’t.
I think we need to find happiness in ourselves, and craft our our happiness and sometimes that might entail choosing carefully the stimulus and people we allow around us because we can’t deny other people can have an effect on how we feel. That also comes from a place of privilege because it’s easier for me to “choose” to be happy because I am not battling an illness or going to bed with an empty belly, or suffering abuse, or suffocated by depression, to cite just a few examples.
When all those extraordinary variables are taken out of the equation, I absolutely believe happiness is in our hands and we definitely have to open our own umbrella.
To quote Monty Python “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life”. This came up because I was having the most evil thrashing battle with insomnia a few days ago – and I was mad as hell. Then this bubble of a thought popped into my head “Hey, it’s 2:30 in the morning, if I do my laundry now, that’s going to pull on the electrical grid at a much less busy time!” Clean clothes, better environmental pull – and some serious sleep the next night.
Yes. it is horrible to look at things that make us miserable, the loss of a loved one, seeing someone in pain, feeling broken… The list is pretty long. However, if you practice, and it takes a lot of it, finding some joy in things when you feel unhappy, you start to turn that outlook around. You’re allowed to feel bad or sad, just don’t make it your focus. Maybe you really miss someone, but if you think about how much they loved you, and spent time with you, it’s bittersweet, but better than if they’d never been there.