In all my years on the planet, I have NEVER met anyone who is truly happy. I've met a lot of people who say they're happy and even act happy but once I get to know them, their underlying misery always sneaks out eventually.
This isn't to say they don't have happy moments or that they're partly or even mostly happy. But the truth is there is no real, lasting happiness on this planet. Because let's face it: life sucks.
It's not easy and though we can have moments or even periods of happiness, a lot of it is really shitty.
There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is that the world lies to us and makes us think life is supposed to be great, and if it isn't then there's something wrong with us.
Case in point, look at all those on anti-depressants. According to the CDC about 11% of people in the US are on some type of anti-depressant. While that may not seem like a lot, they also say only about one third of people who are severely depressed are on medication. That brings the number up to more like a third of the population (Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db76.htm).
Now why is that? Could it be in part that we have this false idea that life is supposed to be all roses and sunshine, and if it's not then we're "sick."
Once we drop this notion that the world is supposed to be great and accept that often life is shitty then we can actually start feeling better about our lives.
Why? Because we'd stop thinking there was something wrong with us. We'd stop believing everyone else has it easier than us and that we have a problem.
Yes we might have problems and that's another story. But one of our problems is not that our life sucks and no one else's does. Because life in general can be pretty shitty. The end.
I love your posts but that's the one I don't agree with.
ReplyDeleteThere are happy people with happy lifes and it's not a myth! It's achievable. I know such people and I am happy myself.
However the misunderstanding here is that happy life is just perfect, soft and safe. Nothing more afar from the truth. Life could be hard and the only difference is that happy people just can cope with it and don't let themselves go down, they focus on good things and they achieve them.
For example, a while ago my sister had cancer and that scared me and my whole family shit out but I just didn't let it to influence me too much. Sure, there were some days that it all looked bad but we quickly recovered. Instead being desperate, we just did what we could and enjoyed our lifes.
Happiness is nothing about ignoring bad things. It's only about not letting them to get into you. I believed I can help my sister, did all I could and then let go and focused on good things. And that got rewarded: good things in my life got better, my strength and strength of others in my family was passed onto my sister who also coped better with her sickness and after a long time, she is cancer free, living her life to the fullest (currently she's enjoying her vacation in Italy, swam in Adriatic see, etc.), have a job and dreams to realize.
The worst thing to do is to pity other person and feel down because of the problem. So we didn't. The sickness was a wonderful and very enlightening experience to everyone in my family (in retrospective, although there were moments where it sucked completely) and now my sister is healthy and we can even better enjoy process of fulfilling our dreams.
There could be no happy life without challenges. Coping with them is a vital part of being happy. You can't skip them, they will be in everyone's lifes but you can see them not as a problems but things to learn, things that can strengthen you once you solve them.
But you're right that if you get people closer, you will see that everyone's got some issues. Maybe most of them can't cope with them gratuitously so they are happy once in a while, but you can definitely have a more lasting feeling of satisfaction from life.
Maybe I didn't get the message quite right here and I'll rethink it. When I was in the depth of depression someone gave me a speech kind of like my post and it really hit home with me.
ReplyDeleteBack then life was really terrible and people telling me a happy life was possible just made me feel worse. When I gave up on that and accepted that life is just shitty I was somehow able to cope better with it, because I wasn't expecting some unrealistic outcome.
Now years down the road I'm pretty happy myself, with a family I love, work that's enjoyable and plenty of flexibility and free time to do what I want. So yeah, I know that people can be happy most of the time.
But at the bottom of the barrel it sure didn't feel that way and this post was for those people who are there.