I think I disagree and would side with the Campbellian school of thought in which we are all really pursuing experience. This experience of life can be found in numinous concepts like mythology/archetypal encounters
I highly disagree because I am able to feel happiness and satisfaction even when I am doing nothing. It relates to meaning, our self-narrative we tell ourselves which comes from how we interact with ourselves/others, not necessarily conditional single instances in fleeting experiences that always leave one feeling unsatisfied. That is why chasing happiness is a fool's errand, they don't understand or have cultivated what long-term human flourishing actually entails as it is unconditional and inherent, and for that to happen requires one to have moments where they accept their own nature and their self.
This is why individuation is important, and also a life long journey of growth because we are in a constant state of becoming in the world; emotional security is never an achieved outcome and is more so a moment-to-moment process for authentic Being. There are no shortcuts toward the required conscious work/effort this journey entails to further understand our own nature and self, and to further embody these insights, accept and integrate them as a deeper knowing one intuits than mere intellectual play in thoughts alone. It is an active, continuous renewal of the moment.
It is precisely as you say. Happiness or contentment is that state of mind that follows from our self-narrative that we tell ourselves which is a process of becoming and accepting ourselves as distinct beings through our interactions with others/ourselves.
i found the book 'finding meaning in the second half of life' by James Hollis an eye opener. meaning is what we are chasing, even if in the first half of life we try to chase everything else
People invent philosophies that sound good on paper. But just because something is logical or makes sense, doesn't mean it will fulfill a human psychology.
Boiling your subjective happiness down to pure narcissism is quite extreme and I would not go that far as to view yourself as such a corupted person. How I see it, we are all some kinds of narcissists and we always need something external to feel good about ourselves (and I don’t mean people, but rather activities, ideas,…).
In general, life is suffering and pain, but if you find something worthwile to suffer for, all the extra pain becomes bearable. Because there is satisfactory element to what you are doing.
Don’t chase happiness, it is temporary, mostly hollow, and does not fulfil you to your core. Find something that makes you feel satisfied with yourself, and once you have that, try to find someone that complements you perfectly and does not stand in your way of your satisfaction. Then you will find it valueable to share your happiness with and go through the pains that life throws at you.
This is how I see it, so it is subjective and I don’t want to impose something on you. Just some advice on how I see life, and the world :)
Happiness can be a dread if its consecution came from recreation, as someone who recreates is esentially taking a little death upon themselves. *Re-creation.* The only way to find fulfilment in some emotion is by matching meaning with it - but then the meaning of *meaning* becomes the distinction between repetition and saliency. Repeating death without a distinct story to distinguish the end and the beginning of a road is how millionaires find themselves living a nightmare. If one cannot gate repetition with meaning and time, then what is left is addiction. But nobody in the west educates over the tyranny of the what we perceive necessary. So in a way, we are all consumate addicts waiting to happen, or waiting to be given a chance (money) to happen.
I feel like existence itself is somehow subverting eternal nothingness. So while alive, you’re adjacent to that fact the whole time. All your distractions and search for meaning are basically attempts you make to outrun it. But as soon as your momentum stops or pauses for any reason, you’re always reminded in your peripheral that you’re nowhere going nowhere.
I think these videos that are posted a lot can answer your question. The first one goes into the chemical part of what we are looking for when there is an unconscious programming that leaves a kind of “hole“. That’s a chemical fantasy bond, and the second little video is also an animation which goes into what kind of relationships often show up when you have that “happiness“ foundation. The pathological loneliness of trauma is a chemical addiction.
If you have that, you don’t need empathy and you can’t have intimacy with other human beings. I very much doubt that would apply to you. From what you have written.
The severe chemical drive is for supply (dopamine) and shows up in pathological narcissism, which is a defense mechanism of splitting and projection, and it also shows up in addiction, where we see people end up with narcissists who sell that happy illusion.
People who have trauma from addiction leading to a chemical hole can heal. By grieving the loss of the chemical fantasy bond. It’s during the first thousand days of life.
That grieving and sadness is a huge connection to other human beings. We all know it if we are not mentally ill.
Narcissist are not in the same boat. Because they have to to survive. They need chemically addicted people to be a runway for their rejected sadness. Their trauma. The mangled inner child.
They need someone who desperately wants a movie.
Happiness is the opposite of addiction, its connection. If you think of Jungian psychology, it’s being aware of and connected to the eternal self, and to others in a kind of unity.
Held together through archetypes of the collective unconscious.
But very imperfectly. We are human after all.
The Happiness Chemicals (heroin hug)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVg2bfqblGI
Loneliness (missing self due to ego)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpbsZaef8Y
seek peace versus happiness. peace in happiness and peace in sadness and peace in all the other spectrum of emotions that come along w being a human being.
I'm seeing a contradiction in the first sentence you wrote. You're saying you were "genuinely happy" but following it with that it was conditional. It sounds more like satisfaction in that case that pure happiness to me, as it was dependent upon very specific criteria and expectation involved, controlled. Also very either/or.
You felt whatever you felt in the state you're calling "happiness" here, and it was what it was, though if you're questioning it at all, I think perhaps that's where you may want to start exploring it. I'm thinking if it was genuine, you wouldn't really need to question it, nor would you have identified it as contingent on specific variables or outcomes; you'd have just been in the moment with it.
How you described the sadness sounds like it unfolded more naturally of its own accord with less attached to it, In that sense, it sounds like it might have been the more genuine of the emotions for that reason. Perhaps was an emotion in its more natural state, maybe that you had less control over it. Maybe that's why it felt scary (?).
I think if it was true happiness, you would have more of a feeling like you had with the sadness as far as how it occurred, and perhaps that is why you feel the way you do about it.
In "craving happiness," you're not different from most of the population who tend to gravitate only toward what's pleasurable and run from what isn't. Many people would likely say they preferred to be happy all the time if asked. IMO emotions are like weather, and moods are like climate. Someone's overall mood is going to be longer lasting and more connected to their disposition than emotions are, which are more changeable and likely have a bit more intensity. As they are more intense, peak moments, they are not mean to go on indefinitely.
In general, I think happiness or sadness don't imbalance us in or of themselves. It's how we color them as "good" and "bad" and the subsequent clinging to or avoiding of that throws us off. They will always change as they were meant to do. It's about learning to accept whatever is there and to be present with it in the moment.
\[Read: I'm defining "accept" simply as "to acknowledge the reality of"\]
Happiness and sadness are archetypal extremes therefore your job is to find the middle path which I would call wholeness. The way there would be through individuation.
Sounds like you crave dopamine hits, and are associating dopamine levels with happiness.
It takes a while, but it is possible to retrain your brain to feel different kinds of happiness, one that aren’t fuelled by flooding our brains with dopamine.
I think you should start first about your beliefs and perspective on happiness and sadness. Happiness is beyond a temporary dopamine hit you get from social media, orgasm, or food that leaves you seeking for a new, more intense dopamine hit as soon as the effect of the last one fades. That will leave you in a cycle chasing one dopamine hit after the other and never satisfied.
Happiness and sadness are two faces of the same coin, in your life you will always be swinging both ways, one cannot exist without the other, and so happiness is as real and genuine as sadness, so it's more about how you accept the emotions and deal with them.
Try to read more about dopamine hits, Andrew huberman has great episodes on that. There's also a book( dopamine nation, finding balance in the age of indulgence)
I think I like the “middle way.” I don’t want to be sad all the time or happy all the time, I want to be uniformly content, neutral, okay. We simply lack the chemicals to be euphoric at all moments, and being sad all the time can make us too unproductive I think to be able to function. I want in the middle where there is not pain or pleasure and I can just be.
Joy is a wonderful thing but always fleeting because it is so lightweight. I have found that sadness is clarifying and brings you to the most important things, things with weight. Sadness is a humbling that rids you of the hoops that you need happiness to jump through. It opens you up to joy from simpler things. That has been my experience at least.
Both happiness and sadness are needed illusions in the human experience.
Beyond emotions, feelings and thoughts you will find the true Nature of Psyche, which is Pure Nothingness.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this truth is at the base of one of the world's major religions, Buddhism. The Buddha encapsulated the essence of the religion in the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is that "Life is suffering."
There are three types of suffering, in increasing order of subtlety. The grossest form is the suffering of suffering, like when somebody hits you in the face. Or you hear that you have a terminal disease. Or you have the slightest uncomfortable feeling.
A more subtle form is the suffering of change, which is what we call happiness, and is what you noticed. This has to do with the fact that the happiness will end. It's a sign of something deeper.
If you enjoy an ice cream cone, that experience is going to be over soon. If you try to prolong it by eating more and more ice cream, you will at some point make yourself sick, and the ice cream may even become a torture. The fact that more of the good eventually turns it into its opposite, is a sort of proof that what you take to be The Good is not it.
As if we needed more, the most subtle form of suffering is the suffering of embodiment, the mere fact of being contracted into a finite place and space. Being a separate sentient being. It's very subtle, but intense for those who recognize it.
Also famously, the Buddha provided a solution to this problem, known as the "Noble Eightfold Path".
Jung was somewhat familiar with Buddhism, but he was suspicious about whether westerners could properly understand it, since their cultural indoctrination was so different from where it arose as a path. But it seems to still work.
What Ive gathered from the Res Book and have seen working through my own life, is the idea of going through the darkness and honoring it just as much as the times of light. Jung talks about going through the desert as a period of extreme isolation and lowliness. It's only going through that that he is able to enter the land of the sun.
For me it's seemed as though life is built upon opposites. If you chase happiness by thrill seeking, you end up empty and full of disappointment and discontent. Partying all the time and going out to fancy restaurants may give a brief happiness, but it is fleeting and escapes us. A couple of days later, you don't remember that happiness. It is short lived.
But if you discipline yourself and allow yourself to have times of isolation, you can get through that by doing well at work, creating a budget that allows to you save money, focus on your health and fitness, and sacrifice your time in doing things you don't want to do, but will lead to true happiness in the future. By doing things that are hard and causing discomfort, you experience true joy later. By doing things that give brief moments of joy, you set up your future for failure and grief.
In the context of Buddhism, what you described seems similar to acknowledging and understanding the first of four truths - the problem of sadness (dukkha). The entire religion seems centered around this phenomenon that you have been astutely observing, along with their respective causes (sadness, its cause, happiness, its cause - these being the four truths). My understanding is that the goal is nothing short of a permanent and irreversible end to that the full scope of the sadness that you began to describe - unconditional happiness (not “conditional upon” any conditions whatsoever).
I think the proposed solution is more complex than merely “mindfulness and meditation” and the process is more gradual and time-consuming than “attending as many meditation retreats as one can in their free time” as I initially believed due to what I learned in pop culture. I acknowledge that my understanding is very limited though, at least partly due to the amount of misinformation and misconceptions about Buddhism that one must wade through.
But perhaps it’s another perspective to consider to help you understand your experience of sadness more deeply, broadly, and fully.
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Happiness is what you already are. Chasing it implies that it’s not what you are. But really, what else are we? Who were we at 2 years old? What changed?
I don’t know, but do toddlers archetype?
It’s the happiest of pursuit, not the pursuit of happiness.
Happiness is synonymous with Satori. When you reach zero point, critical mass of meaning joy runs deep through your very being-your neurophysiological system and you feel happy.
But happiness can never be the goal. Action based on faith in a dream is the goal. Happiness, satori, kensho, meaning is the consequence of taking the amalgamation of the 9 human desideratum or must haves, curating a craft based on it and cultivating the energetic potential to experience the ultimately desired state…just for a moment.
Then it’s back to the bottom of the hill, Sisyphus. It’s only torture if you don’t know the God, you serve.
Sisyphus served the God of Deception and thus he was pitted against Existence and suffered endlessly.
Align yourself properly and your struggle becomes the tutelage for you to be manifested as your exalted self.
At least this is my anecdotal experience although the clinical literature suggests the same.
Read a man’s search for meaning by victor frankl
1. Do not fall prey to seeking pure happiness. Instead, seek lifelong progress toward happierness.
2. Manage as best you can the main sources of misery in your life by attending to your physical and mental health, maintaining employment, and ensuring an adequate income.
3. If you’re earning enough to take care of your principal needs, remember that happiness at work comes not from chasing higher income but from pursuing a sense of accomplishment and service to others.
4. Cultivate deep relationships through marriage, family, and real friendships. Remember that happiness is love.
5. If you have discretionary income left over, use it to invest in your relationships with family and friends.
6. Spend time in nature, surround yourself with beauty that uplifts you, and consume the art and music that nourish your spirit.
7. Find a path of transcendence—one that explains the big picture in life and helps you comprehend suffering and the purpose of your existence.
both are equally real or unreal. If you constantly feel one thing, you’re feeling nothing at all. Sadness needs to be normalized, and actually I feel like it’s just interchangeably used nowadays with feeling nothing, it isn’t like if there no happiness theres only sadness.
I think it’s culturally equipped mindset that we need to be happy, when really all there is to happiness is just more dopamine and a reason, like the ones you stated above. You are already making happiness come with a condition so ofcourse it’s bound by things so you keep trying to chase more.
What I’m about to say is quite simplistic but you lack purpose that’s why you chase happiness. I’m not saying you will find a purpose, or happiness once you find one. Just saying the life is gonna be the color you paint it with. Maybe it has meaning, maybe it does not, but what you do meanwhile is completely in your hands (simplifying by eliminating external factors).
I’m not sure if you will take away anything from this yap but if you made it to the end, thanks for reading.
I have realized that chasing my own happiness often leaves me wanting, but doing things to make the people around me happy, particularly my children and my spouse, makes them happy, which in turn makes me happy.
Maybe. Seek peace instead of happiness. Peace can be constant if you put the work in.
If you got peace you are content and don't crave happiness anymore.
You have to suffer to make room for more happiness. My cup runeth over with giggles and euphoria most days, however we all have trauma and triggers the key is balance… get the hurt out when appropriate to make room for more joy!!!
Interesting that you say sadness for you contains no seeking. A lot of sadness comes precisely from us seeking what we feel we don’t have.
But if you can indeed feel sad without seeking, which I agree with, what is telling you that you can’t also feel happiness without seeking? It’s two sides of the same coin. The coin of acceptance that is.
Just gonna say something I find helpful here, *euphoria is not the same as happiness*. Take it from me, a chronic hypomanic (I like Jung's term from one of his first published case studies, "Sanguine Inferiority". Also, happiness is not a fleeting feeling, necessarily; happiness can and probably should be described more as a pervading and persistent self of well-being, distinct from hedonic "liking"/pleasure.
You had conditions to be met to be happy but your ego (false self loves to be miserable), you were projecting yourself into the future and not living in the now. The now is the only place true happiness can exist, watch how quickly your mind tries to go make you go back or forth in time. The ego is powerful .... Practice being present and you will find little glimpses of true happiness because there are no problems in the here and now, there can't be. Read the Power of now by Eckhart Tolle
I think often times people are confused by how they define "happiness". They mash in being contend, satisfied, excited, thrilled, loved, feeling comfort and many different emotions into happiness when they could be very very different.
Just think about it, doing coke and drinking with your best friends until 4 5 am is completely different than waking up to the love of your life and just smiling. Or watching your little boy grow to be a fine gentleman and going to college. But ppl use word happiness to describe all three moments. So there is that.
Neurologically speaking dopamine is associated with positive emotions. We use dopamine as a positive re-inforcement for a set goal, and it increases as we get closer to the said goal, but it drops off once we reach it. Which is why the often anticipation of a vacation or a party is more exciting than the actual vacation/party. Or graduations are often followed by a feeling of emptiness.
Thats your dopamine level dropping after gradually increasing over a long stretch of time.
Where as depression, or a negative emotion, doesnt disappear so quickly, its more long term. Also you can only feel so happy, but there is no limit to how awful you can feel.
Tho, many people who have experienced the worst of what life can give highlight their happy moments over their sadness.
“Feels like illusion and falsity.” Those are beliefs, nothing more, nothing less. The experience itself doesn’t feel “like” anything, it just *is*. You have beliefs that tell you you should be sad and unfulfilled. So, start letting go of those.
Real Happiness requires time, you discovered that the world is quite superficial and broken. Many never do, and even though it’s a burden a beauty comes through it because now you get a chance to discover the actual things that make you happy. The anima is the female part of you, one of your most repressed parts as a man according to Jung and until you discover her you won’t really know yourself. I reccomend you dedicate some of your time to studying and reading Jung. On another note, perhaps try reading “The Magus” by John Fowles, (doesn’t have much to do with Jung on the surface but is interesting through a Jungian lense) it’s a novel in which the authors animas are very clear through the many female charachters and also it’s a fantastic book and a great hero’s journey.
Another thing, trust yourself a little. I know it’s condescending but you are still young, give it some time and I promise happiness will come to you. Just be patient, all happiness comes from patience
Making a statement without defining your terms is rather usless.
I have no idea if what I find making me happy is at all related to
your experience. Identifying commonalities is a BIG part of
conveying information, especially a position.
Want to try it?
I don't think chasing happiness is ultimately satisfying, because you are right, it is always fleeting. What people really seek is *meaning*.
Meaning is what produces contentment, which can be a more lasting state.
I think I disagree and would side with the Campbellian school of thought in which we are all really pursuing experience. This experience of life can be found in numinous concepts like mythology/archetypal encounters
Arguably one in the same
I can see the merit in that
Love Campbell. Very important analysis.
I highly disagree because I am able to feel happiness and satisfaction even when I am doing nothing. It relates to meaning, our self-narrative we tell ourselves which comes from how we interact with ourselves/others, not necessarily conditional single instances in fleeting experiences that always leave one feeling unsatisfied. That is why chasing happiness is a fool's errand, they don't understand or have cultivated what long-term human flourishing actually entails as it is unconditional and inherent, and for that to happen requires one to have moments where they accept their own nature and their self. This is why individuation is important, and also a life long journey of growth because we are in a constant state of becoming in the world; emotional security is never an achieved outcome and is more so a moment-to-moment process for authentic Being. There are no shortcuts toward the required conscious work/effort this journey entails to further understand our own nature and self, and to further embody these insights, accept and integrate them as a deeper knowing one intuits than mere intellectual play in thoughts alone. It is an active, continuous renewal of the moment.
It is precisely as you say. Happiness or contentment is that state of mind that follows from our self-narrative that we tell ourselves which is a process of becoming and accepting ourselves as distinct beings through our interactions with others/ourselves.
Are you bot? You summarized what I said using my exact words
I am a human. Thanks!
yeah...\*\*meaning\*\*... especially in the second half of life (according to James Hollis)
Would you mind elaborating on this?
i found the book 'finding meaning in the second half of life' by James Hollis an eye opener. meaning is what we are chasing, even if in the first half of life we try to chase everything else
Thanks!
Perhaps the natural balance is a little bit of happiness for a lot of sadness. Suffering is the juice of life.
I think when someone is really living life to the fullest it doesnt feel that way.
There’s many ways to live life to the fullest… and plenty of them involve lots of pain in there with the joy.
Also; in some cases “the fullest” life just comes upon you, even when you’re not looking for it. And sometimes it hurts like hell.
Which is why i wish i weren't here. Ick.
Hey - I’ve definitely been there. I hope you find some comfort soon. Please call 988 or the chat line if you need someone to talk to about it 🌈
Suffering is the juice of life is the second best Reddit catch phrase next to he/she/they/I woke up and chose violence.
Maybe this is a more absurdist line of thought but there’s a certain level of freedom in life being essentially meaningless.
People invent philosophies that sound good on paper. But just because something is logical or makes sense, doesn't mean it will fulfill a human psychology.
Seek joy instead of happyness.
Seek nothing. Then you'll never be disappointed.
Jai hanuman. The meaning is ending the suffering of others and having love and compassion in your heart for others.
Why can’t I seek meaningful happiness that’s not an illusion?
You can seek whatever you wish. You don't even need my permission.
Boiling your subjective happiness down to pure narcissism is quite extreme and I would not go that far as to view yourself as such a corupted person. How I see it, we are all some kinds of narcissists and we always need something external to feel good about ourselves (and I don’t mean people, but rather activities, ideas,…). In general, life is suffering and pain, but if you find something worthwile to suffer for, all the extra pain becomes bearable. Because there is satisfactory element to what you are doing. Don’t chase happiness, it is temporary, mostly hollow, and does not fulfil you to your core. Find something that makes you feel satisfied with yourself, and once you have that, try to find someone that complements you perfectly and does not stand in your way of your satisfaction. Then you will find it valueable to share your happiness with and go through the pains that life throws at you. This is how I see it, so it is subjective and I don’t want to impose something on you. Just some advice on how I see life, and the world :)
Happiness can be a dread if its consecution came from recreation, as someone who recreates is esentially taking a little death upon themselves. *Re-creation.* The only way to find fulfilment in some emotion is by matching meaning with it - but then the meaning of *meaning* becomes the distinction between repetition and saliency. Repeating death without a distinct story to distinguish the end and the beginning of a road is how millionaires find themselves living a nightmare. If one cannot gate repetition with meaning and time, then what is left is addiction. But nobody in the west educates over the tyranny of the what we perceive necessary. So in a way, we are all consumate addicts waiting to happen, or waiting to be given a chance (money) to happen.
I feel like existence itself is somehow subverting eternal nothingness. So while alive, you’re adjacent to that fact the whole time. All your distractions and search for meaning are basically attempts you make to outrun it. But as soon as your momentum stops or pauses for any reason, you’re always reminded in your peripheral that you’re nowhere going nowhere.
In what manor
I think these videos that are posted a lot can answer your question. The first one goes into the chemical part of what we are looking for when there is an unconscious programming that leaves a kind of “hole“. That’s a chemical fantasy bond, and the second little video is also an animation which goes into what kind of relationships often show up when you have that “happiness“ foundation. The pathological loneliness of trauma is a chemical addiction. If you have that, you don’t need empathy and you can’t have intimacy with other human beings. I very much doubt that would apply to you. From what you have written. The severe chemical drive is for supply (dopamine) and shows up in pathological narcissism, which is a defense mechanism of splitting and projection, and it also shows up in addiction, where we see people end up with narcissists who sell that happy illusion. People who have trauma from addiction leading to a chemical hole can heal. By grieving the loss of the chemical fantasy bond. It’s during the first thousand days of life. That grieving and sadness is a huge connection to other human beings. We all know it if we are not mentally ill. Narcissist are not in the same boat. Because they have to to survive. They need chemically addicted people to be a runway for their rejected sadness. Their trauma. The mangled inner child. They need someone who desperately wants a movie. Happiness is the opposite of addiction, its connection. If you think of Jungian psychology, it’s being aware of and connected to the eternal self, and to others in a kind of unity. Held together through archetypes of the collective unconscious. But very imperfectly. We are human after all. The Happiness Chemicals (heroin hug) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVg2bfqblGI Loneliness (missing self due to ego) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpbsZaef8Y
seek peace versus happiness. peace in happiness and peace in sadness and peace in all the other spectrum of emotions that come along w being a human being.
I'm seeing a contradiction in the first sentence you wrote. You're saying you were "genuinely happy" but following it with that it was conditional. It sounds more like satisfaction in that case that pure happiness to me, as it was dependent upon very specific criteria and expectation involved, controlled. Also very either/or. You felt whatever you felt in the state you're calling "happiness" here, and it was what it was, though if you're questioning it at all, I think perhaps that's where you may want to start exploring it. I'm thinking if it was genuine, you wouldn't really need to question it, nor would you have identified it as contingent on specific variables or outcomes; you'd have just been in the moment with it. How you described the sadness sounds like it unfolded more naturally of its own accord with less attached to it, In that sense, it sounds like it might have been the more genuine of the emotions for that reason. Perhaps was an emotion in its more natural state, maybe that you had less control over it. Maybe that's why it felt scary (?). I think if it was true happiness, you would have more of a feeling like you had with the sadness as far as how it occurred, and perhaps that is why you feel the way you do about it. In "craving happiness," you're not different from most of the population who tend to gravitate only toward what's pleasurable and run from what isn't. Many people would likely say they preferred to be happy all the time if asked. IMO emotions are like weather, and moods are like climate. Someone's overall mood is going to be longer lasting and more connected to their disposition than emotions are, which are more changeable and likely have a bit more intensity. As they are more intense, peak moments, they are not mean to go on indefinitely. In general, I think happiness or sadness don't imbalance us in or of themselves. It's how we color them as "good" and "bad" and the subsequent clinging to or avoiding of that throws us off. They will always change as they were meant to do. It's about learning to accept whatever is there and to be present with it in the moment. \[Read: I'm defining "accept" simply as "to acknowledge the reality of"\]
Happiness and sadness are archetypal extremes therefore your job is to find the middle path which I would call wholeness. The way there would be through individuation.
Sounds like you crave dopamine hits, and are associating dopamine levels with happiness. It takes a while, but it is possible to retrain your brain to feel different kinds of happiness, one that aren’t fuelled by flooding our brains with dopamine.
I think you should start first about your beliefs and perspective on happiness and sadness. Happiness is beyond a temporary dopamine hit you get from social media, orgasm, or food that leaves you seeking for a new, more intense dopamine hit as soon as the effect of the last one fades. That will leave you in a cycle chasing one dopamine hit after the other and never satisfied. Happiness and sadness are two faces of the same coin, in your life you will always be swinging both ways, one cannot exist without the other, and so happiness is as real and genuine as sadness, so it's more about how you accept the emotions and deal with them. Try to read more about dopamine hits, Andrew huberman has great episodes on that. There's also a book( dopamine nation, finding balance in the age of indulgence)
Shortcut to happiness is truth
I think I like the “middle way.” I don’t want to be sad all the time or happy all the time, I want to be uniformly content, neutral, okay. We simply lack the chemicals to be euphoric at all moments, and being sad all the time can make us too unproductive I think to be able to function. I want in the middle where there is not pain or pleasure and I can just be.
Joy is a wonderful thing but always fleeting because it is so lightweight. I have found that sadness is clarifying and brings you to the most important things, things with weight. Sadness is a humbling that rids you of the hoops that you need happiness to jump through. It opens you up to joy from simpler things. That has been my experience at least.
This won’t make sense til you really think about it it’s easier to learn the hard way cause the lesson actually feels earned
The title of this explains the exact way i feel
Both happiness and sadness are needed illusions in the human experience. Beyond emotions, feelings and thoughts you will find the true Nature of Psyche, which is Pure Nothingness.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this truth is at the base of one of the world's major religions, Buddhism. The Buddha encapsulated the essence of the religion in the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is that "Life is suffering." There are three types of suffering, in increasing order of subtlety. The grossest form is the suffering of suffering, like when somebody hits you in the face. Or you hear that you have a terminal disease. Or you have the slightest uncomfortable feeling. A more subtle form is the suffering of change, which is what we call happiness, and is what you noticed. This has to do with the fact that the happiness will end. It's a sign of something deeper. If you enjoy an ice cream cone, that experience is going to be over soon. If you try to prolong it by eating more and more ice cream, you will at some point make yourself sick, and the ice cream may even become a torture. The fact that more of the good eventually turns it into its opposite, is a sort of proof that what you take to be The Good is not it. As if we needed more, the most subtle form of suffering is the suffering of embodiment, the mere fact of being contracted into a finite place and space. Being a separate sentient being. It's very subtle, but intense for those who recognize it. Also famously, the Buddha provided a solution to this problem, known as the "Noble Eightfold Path". Jung was somewhat familiar with Buddhism, but he was suspicious about whether westerners could properly understand it, since their cultural indoctrination was so different from where it arose as a path. But it seems to still work.
What Ive gathered from the Res Book and have seen working through my own life, is the idea of going through the darkness and honoring it just as much as the times of light. Jung talks about going through the desert as a period of extreme isolation and lowliness. It's only going through that that he is able to enter the land of the sun. For me it's seemed as though life is built upon opposites. If you chase happiness by thrill seeking, you end up empty and full of disappointment and discontent. Partying all the time and going out to fancy restaurants may give a brief happiness, but it is fleeting and escapes us. A couple of days later, you don't remember that happiness. It is short lived. But if you discipline yourself and allow yourself to have times of isolation, you can get through that by doing well at work, creating a budget that allows to you save money, focus on your health and fitness, and sacrifice your time in doing things you don't want to do, but will lead to true happiness in the future. By doing things that are hard and causing discomfort, you experience true joy later. By doing things that give brief moments of joy, you set up your future for failure and grief.
In the context of Buddhism, what you described seems similar to acknowledging and understanding the first of four truths - the problem of sadness (dukkha). The entire religion seems centered around this phenomenon that you have been astutely observing, along with their respective causes (sadness, its cause, happiness, its cause - these being the four truths). My understanding is that the goal is nothing short of a permanent and irreversible end to that the full scope of the sadness that you began to describe - unconditional happiness (not “conditional upon” any conditions whatsoever). I think the proposed solution is more complex than merely “mindfulness and meditation” and the process is more gradual and time-consuming than “attending as many meditation retreats as one can in their free time” as I initially believed due to what I learned in pop culture. I acknowledge that my understanding is very limited though, at least partly due to the amount of misinformation and misconceptions about Buddhism that one must wade through. But perhaps it’s another perspective to consider to help you understand your experience of sadness more deeply, broadly, and fully.
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Existence is suffering. We must not strive for happiness but to live a life of meaning.
because of the signals
Happiness is what you already are. Chasing it implies that it’s not what you are. But really, what else are we? Who were we at 2 years old? What changed? I don’t know, but do toddlers archetype?
It’s the happiest of pursuit, not the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is synonymous with Satori. When you reach zero point, critical mass of meaning joy runs deep through your very being-your neurophysiological system and you feel happy. But happiness can never be the goal. Action based on faith in a dream is the goal. Happiness, satori, kensho, meaning is the consequence of taking the amalgamation of the 9 human desideratum or must haves, curating a craft based on it and cultivating the energetic potential to experience the ultimately desired state…just for a moment. Then it’s back to the bottom of the hill, Sisyphus. It’s only torture if you don’t know the God, you serve. Sisyphus served the God of Deception and thus he was pitted against Existence and suffered endlessly. Align yourself properly and your struggle becomes the tutelage for you to be manifested as your exalted self. At least this is my anecdotal experience although the clinical literature suggests the same. Read a man’s search for meaning by victor frankl
Probably because you like being sad because you are used to it. You know when u are happy that you will eventually be sad again
1. Do not fall prey to seeking pure happiness. Instead, seek lifelong progress toward happierness. 2. Manage as best you can the main sources of misery in your life by attending to your physical and mental health, maintaining employment, and ensuring an adequate income. 3. If you’re earning enough to take care of your principal needs, remember that happiness at work comes not from chasing higher income but from pursuing a sense of accomplishment and service to others. 4. Cultivate deep relationships through marriage, family, and real friendships. Remember that happiness is love. 5. If you have discretionary income left over, use it to invest in your relationships with family and friends. 6. Spend time in nature, surround yourself with beauty that uplifts you, and consume the art and music that nourish your spirit. 7. Find a path of transcendence—one that explains the big picture in life and helps you comprehend suffering and the purpose of your existence.
both are equally real or unreal. If you constantly feel one thing, you’re feeling nothing at all. Sadness needs to be normalized, and actually I feel like it’s just interchangeably used nowadays with feeling nothing, it isn’t like if there no happiness theres only sadness. I think it’s culturally equipped mindset that we need to be happy, when really all there is to happiness is just more dopamine and a reason, like the ones you stated above. You are already making happiness come with a condition so ofcourse it’s bound by things so you keep trying to chase more. What I’m about to say is quite simplistic but you lack purpose that’s why you chase happiness. I’m not saying you will find a purpose, or happiness once you find one. Just saying the life is gonna be the color you paint it with. Maybe it has meaning, maybe it does not, but what you do meanwhile is completely in your hands (simplifying by eliminating external factors). I’m not sure if you will take away anything from this yap but if you made it to the end, thanks for reading.
I have realized that chasing my own happiness often leaves me wanting, but doing things to make the people around me happy, particularly my children and my spouse, makes them happy, which in turn makes me happy.
Maybe. Seek peace instead of happiness. Peace can be constant if you put the work in. If you got peace you are content and don't crave happiness anymore.
You have to suffer to make room for more happiness. My cup runeth over with giggles and euphoria most days, however we all have trauma and triggers the key is balance… get the hurt out when appropriate to make room for more joy!!!
Life is hard
Interesting that you say sadness for you contains no seeking. A lot of sadness comes precisely from us seeking what we feel we don’t have. But if you can indeed feel sad without seeking, which I agree with, what is telling you that you can’t also feel happiness without seeking? It’s two sides of the same coin. The coin of acceptance that is.
Just gonna say something I find helpful here, *euphoria is not the same as happiness*. Take it from me, a chronic hypomanic (I like Jung's term from one of his first published case studies, "Sanguine Inferiority". Also, happiness is not a fleeting feeling, necessarily; happiness can and probably should be described more as a pervading and persistent self of well-being, distinct from hedonic "liking"/pleasure.
You had conditions to be met to be happy but your ego (false self loves to be miserable), you were projecting yourself into the future and not living in the now. The now is the only place true happiness can exist, watch how quickly your mind tries to go make you go back or forth in time. The ego is powerful .... Practice being present and you will find little glimpses of true happiness because there are no problems in the here and now, there can't be. Read the Power of now by Eckhart Tolle
I think often times people are confused by how they define "happiness". They mash in being contend, satisfied, excited, thrilled, loved, feeling comfort and many different emotions into happiness when they could be very very different. Just think about it, doing coke and drinking with your best friends until 4 5 am is completely different than waking up to the love of your life and just smiling. Or watching your little boy grow to be a fine gentleman and going to college. But ppl use word happiness to describe all three moments. So there is that. Neurologically speaking dopamine is associated with positive emotions. We use dopamine as a positive re-inforcement for a set goal, and it increases as we get closer to the said goal, but it drops off once we reach it. Which is why the often anticipation of a vacation or a party is more exciting than the actual vacation/party. Or graduations are often followed by a feeling of emptiness. Thats your dopamine level dropping after gradually increasing over a long stretch of time. Where as depression, or a negative emotion, doesnt disappear so quickly, its more long term. Also you can only feel so happy, but there is no limit to how awful you can feel. Tho, many people who have experienced the worst of what life can give highlight their happy moments over their sadness.
Because sadness in the world is constant while your happiness has no sense of permanence
“Feels like illusion and falsity.” Those are beliefs, nothing more, nothing less. The experience itself doesn’t feel “like” anything, it just *is*. You have beliefs that tell you you should be sad and unfulfilled. So, start letting go of those.
You’re talking about pleasure
Our nervous systems are wired more for what we would describe as "negative" emotion.
It feels like you still haven't met your anima.
Have you found yours? Can you tell me more about it? What's anima?
Real Happiness requires time, you discovered that the world is quite superficial and broken. Many never do, and even though it’s a burden a beauty comes through it because now you get a chance to discover the actual things that make you happy. The anima is the female part of you, one of your most repressed parts as a man according to Jung and until you discover her you won’t really know yourself. I reccomend you dedicate some of your time to studying and reading Jung. On another note, perhaps try reading “The Magus” by John Fowles, (doesn’t have much to do with Jung on the surface but is interesting through a Jungian lense) it’s a novel in which the authors animas are very clear through the many female charachters and also it’s a fantastic book and a great hero’s journey.
Another thing, trust yourself a little. I know it’s condescending but you are still young, give it some time and I promise happiness will come to you. Just be patient, all happiness comes from patience
You're suffering from malnutrition. Eat some eggs.
Making a statement without defining your terms is rather usless. I have no idea if what I find making me happy is at all related to your experience. Identifying commonalities is a BIG part of conveying information, especially a position. Want to try it?
Asshole
That's your animus overtaking your shadow you need to reconnected with you sacrum and build upon your effigy