An essay about the problem with chasing happiness
Most of us can probably agree that we value happiness and safety. Naturally, our brains would work hard to maximize opportunities to feel positive feelings and sustain our well-being.
And our brains are incredibly powerful. Brains are hardwired to analyze and anticipate constantly, without us being aware of it. Although this is meant for self-preservation, the methods they use for pursuing these needs can create unwanted consequences and end up pushing happiness further and further away.
I want you to consider your answer to this hypothetical question:
What do you think would make you happier: winning the lottery or becoming a paraplegic?
There surprisingly may not be a straight-forward answer to this question. In a 2004 TED talk1, psychologist Dan Gilbert speaks about a study that was done to compare the levels of reported happiness people felt one year after either winning a lottery jackpot, or permanently losing the function of their legs. The study’s results showed that there was no significant difference in happiness between the two groups.
When presented with the above scenarios, your brain creates snapshot of what life may be like in each situation. On one hand, you may have imagined being free from daily financial and job-related stresses you have now, and in the other scenario, you may have come up with ways that your disability would make everyday chores and personal hygiene more challenging.
Brains cannot see the future though. One thing going well or badly in life is going to have a smaller effect than you imagine once you take into account the millions of other variables that will influence your future happiness. And furthermore, what is considered a “good” or “bad” life event? Can things be both?
Things are rarely as black and white as “good” or bad.” If you’re human, you’re probably guilty of over-generalizing life events as one, or the other, rather than recognizing the reality – our lives are collections of thousands of events, all colored one of an infinite varieties of gray. Buying-in to this future-casting superpower creates worry, regret, and fear – and none of those things will make you happy.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.” I hear it all the time, but people aren’t any good it. I believe we can take it a step beyond that: we shouldn’t sweat the “big stuff” either.
At this time, I deviate from our topic to acknowledge how hypocritical I am being when I preach this – I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD), and my struggle with the disorder centers around my brain’s unreasonable attempts to avoid all bad feelings and experience good feelings. In OCD circles, patients and therapists will refer to specific OCD themes that trigger a high anxiety response such as contamination OCD, harm OCD, or relationship OCD. In my case, my main OCD theme is a “bad feelings” OCD.
When I am triggered by unwanted feelings, like anxiety or sadness, my brain tricks me into believing that my bad emotions were preventable. I become stuck in my head, searching for “errors” I’d recently made – thinking that if I can place blame on specific actions I took, I’ll be able to avoid repeating my mistakes in the future. As a result, I feel compelled to comb through the hundreds of decisions, thoughts, and events that our days consist of – regardless of how tiny they are – looking for “errors.” I have spent many hours, and unfortunately entire days, reviewing this mental newsfeed in my head rather than living and experiencing the present moment. I’ve “sweated the small stuff” more than nearly anyone, and it has taken a massive amount of life away from me. But what about the “big stuff” I mentioned?
If your goal is to become a master at living a life of regret, then I advise spending as much time as possible doing the following: compare the way your life is now to a hypothetical alternative life that you wish you could be living if this or that happened differently. This “What If” game is a farce and deserves zero credence. What if I never found my calling? What if I married the wrong person!
When we think about “what could have been,” we are creating a fantasy in our head, making it easy for our brains to depict our “what could have been” as the ideal life, but our happiness would be impossible to predict. Maybe we’d be happier, maybe not. Spending energy thinking about it is about as helpful for your happiness and realistic as hoping to become a student at Hogwart’s.
We can use this knowledge to our advantage though. This means we don’t need to put pressure on ourselves to make the right moves all the time. Ultimately, we are guaranteed one outcome no matter how life unfolds – we will experience moments of tremendous joy and moments of great pain, because we’re human.
Two common experiences for people to report are a feeling of surprise with their level of resilience after tragedy and a feeling of emptiness after great excitement passes. This can partly be due to our inability to know what will look like a blessing or a curse in retrospect.
There is an old Taoist story that goes like this:
There once was an old farmer whose horse ran away. “What bad fortune” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next day, the horse returned and brought three wild horses back with it. “What good fortune” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next day his son tried riding one of the untamed horses and fell off, badly injuring his leg. “What bad fortune” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next day the military came into the farmer’s village looking to draft young, able-bodied men for the war. Seeing his son’s injured leg, they passed him over. “What good fortune” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.
As told on the mindfulness app, Calm
In a moment of great suffering I am not suggesting you try not to be sad. Be in the moment you are in and let yourself feel the sadness, but do not look at that moment in life as a brick wall standing in your path. In life we have obstacles, and they can all be overcome.
This means we must accept that moments of joy never last forever either. Anyone who has been in a long-term relationship is aware of the fading of the honeymoon period. If enough time passes, it inevitably fades, and that’s normal. Author and speaker Jay Shetty believes this change simply signals that a relationship had reached a place of complete comfort and safety. We do not need to look for reasons within ourselves or our partners for waning excitement level in relationships. Doing so happens to be a common compulsive behavior for people with relationship-themed OCD.
One of the darkest periods of my life was in the fall of 2020. I was struggling with mental illness to the point that I was suicidal. I attempted. And I am incredibly lucky to have survived.
I had to take time away from work and time away from my kids to be admitted into an inpatient hospital suicide-watch and depression rehabilitation unit for one week. My situation felt hopeless, and it remained that way for months afterwards. That dark time in my life ended up being one of the best things that has happened to me.
In the aftermath of hitting rock bottom I gained a much better understanding of my mental illness. Being diagnosed for the first time with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder after years of ineffective therapy allowed me to seek out the proper type of treatment. I created healthier relationships with my family. I learned self-compassion and became more grateful for everything in my life. I found out I am more resilient than I thought any person could possibly be.
I remember being about 18 or 19 years old and thinking to myself,
Life has been pretty easy on me so far, I don’t think that’s normal… Uh oh… Since I haven’t had to deal with heavy shit like death, or failure in school, or a serious break-up, or a serious accident, whenever it comes up, I’ll be doomed because I won’t know how to handle it!
I was terrified of struggling at anything. I took extra time to finish my undergraduate degree because, rather than taking the risk of feeling overwhelmed with too many difficult courses at one time, I unnecessarily spread out my required courses over a five year time period.
Now I realize that humans can handle a hellish amount of suffering. You might not think you can, but believe me, all people can handle terrible things. Which is good news for everyone, because life can inflict tremendous pain on us at any moment.
Perhaps living our lives in fear of being unhappy is part of what drives our desperation to label everything good or bad. If we were not terrified of being vulnerable, taking chances, or failing, we would not perceive every decision or every obstacle as an opportunity to either feel good or bad. No matter how afraid you are or how much pain you are in, let yourself experience every moment because maybe, if we can all simply be more present, then we’ll finally be happy.
Thank you for reading!
Links
Brave Enough All Along 