Happy…
(Rambling mode ON)
Sometimes I find that in order to be happy, I have to make an effort. I think it is easy to choose to be miserable, but it is not easy to choose to be happy.
Some people say happiness is all in your mind. Happiness is a choice. If I can say, “I’m going to be happy” and feel happy, wow, what a happy world it is.
I also wonder some of the owner of great minds suffers from depression.
I think it is aloud to feel sad and depressed from time to time. It makes you appreciate happiness. It makes you appreciate little things. As long as it doesn’t drag me down too deep, I think it is ok to feel sad and just completely do nothing if that is what I want to do. Sometimes only time can bring you back to normal.
Sometimes there is juuuust a little moment when all of a sudden you feel better. Sometimes when you don’t concentrate on being happy, something simple and unthinkable makes you feel better.
Sometimes I have to do some certain stuff to feel better, at least for a while. That is why I think happiness is an effort. It needs training and practise.
Why are there so many self help books to make us feel happy? Is there so many sad people out there?
I avoid certain environment so that I won’t feel sad and depressed. But sometimes I just cannot avoid it. And I work hard to be happy, but then I feel tired.
To be happy is an effort. To be able to control your mind to be happy is a big effort. It is an effort because it needs a change of paradigm, attitude and mindset.
Maybe being happy is not that important. Maybe being content is better. Hmh.
June 26, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Hai Parvita, I am also constantly fighting against my own depression. I’d like to share some of my thoughts to you
I was once a believer of Martin Seligman’s happiness theory. But, the more I study about happiness, I realized how situational happiness is. It’s quite late for me to realized that happiness is actually a kind of positive emotion. Since it is an emotion, it is situational in nature. We can be happy at a time and feel bad five minutes later.
Around 26 – 27th December 2004, I was playing around with friends at my “kos-kosan” in Depok, we joke around, we lough out loud, and I feel happy, until another friend approached and told me to see the news on the TV. The news was informing about the tsunami disaster in Aceh. I was shocked, immediately silenced, and felt mix emotion of anger, regret, and sad. My family live in Aceh, only a kilometer away from the nearest beach. Later, when writing one of my college paper about happiness, the image of this personal experience made me realize how situational happiness is.
There is a book written by Csikzentmihalyi titled “Finding Flow” which explains very well about an alternative of happiness. Instead of pursuing happiness, Csikzentmihalyi proposed a term called flow. My interpretation of his writing is that the ultimate goal of life is not happiness but the experience(s) of attaining happiness. His concept of flow has been applied to treat varieties of psychological pathology, including Schizophrenia without the patient having to have to take any drugs.
If you have time, you probably want to check the book out…
*sorry for the bad English writing. I am still practicing