Happiness Is A State, Not A Definition
Optimism is an extremely useful trait that helps us face life’s challenges. But being positive is not enough. Extreme optimism or extreme pessimism are not desirable. And it seems that in our modern society, the dictatorship of euphoria disgraces those who do not sign it.
In this article, we try to understand how to distinguish the dictatorship of happiness from the democratic coexistence of different emotions , including happiness.
Happiness and advertising
Happiness is a product produced by advertising. It tells us everything we need to buy, everything we need to do, and all the self-help books we need to read to be happy. Only beautiful, healthy and happy people get into the magazines and are successful.
Those beautiful, happy and eternally smiling people make us feel bad. It makes us want to buy or do what they do and say to be happier in our lives.
What is the right balance? Simply buying what we need and what suits our nature and economy. It’s about enjoyment, despite the many ideals we’ve received that say we’re not enough. Many of these unhealthy “beauty ideals” have led to diseases such as anorexia or bulimia. It is not allowed to happen with the model image of happiness. Let’s live our lives naturally.
Happiness is not about living without problems
Happiness is a space, a flow, a moment that gives us life anytime and under any circumstances. To think that happy moments happen only under ideal conditions is to deny the grandeur of a rainy day. It’s gray and somewhat uncomfortable, but also hypnotic.
You can’t know when a happy moment happens or when an unwanted situation turns into a happy moment. What is certain is that an open attitude helps us lose nothing positive.
Good luck accepting all my feelings
Today, more than ever before, we diagnose our feelings. If we are sad, it is considered intolerable and we want to keep such people as far away from our existence as possible. If one is happy, one wants to encourage it and expand it to the point of exhaustion with little regard for the characteristics of the emotions: it is usually close and also temporary.
We want our minds to maintain positivity and repel negativity. So how could you distinguish one pleasant state from another unpleasant one? What would have happened to our survival if we had not remembered negative memories? How could we have evolved as a species and now as humans?
We need to analyze ourselves as complex people and able to accommodate different emotions. The only way to live to the fullest is to let all emotions come to us and allow us to embrace them.
Self-defined happiness without ideals is hopelessness
There is no struggle or dream that does not involve dedication and sacrifice. Although sometimes, if our dreams inspire and motivate us, we only see it as part of the path.
However, we need to leave certain things that are relevant to us behind in order to achieve a greater goal. So it’s only logical to want to get through the test and celebrate at night. Such surrender does not take over us. However, if we give up what we love, it causes fear and discomfort.
We may choose to always be happy and thus give up on goals that we know in advance will be difficult. However, this obsessive pursuit of happiness and feeling good at all times is not comparable to mental health. A person also needs stress, disappointment and uncertainty in his life.
Feeling good is a cultural norm that can lead us to lose our minds. A person who has hope and who fights for ideas is able to deal with more discomfort than a person who has assumed happiness to be a necessary state. An existence that may have already lost its essence and meaning by wanting to live always by being happy.
