Where is my happiness?
Happiness is the primary purpose of human existence. Whether we are conscious about it or not, we align all our actions towards this goal. In our search, we scale the highest mountains and explore the deepest valleys, literally and figuratively. Whether our actions are morally good or bad, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal, beneficial in the long term, or just satisfying in the short term, we make decisions to capture the feeling of happiness. Whether these actions bring us closer to happiness or throw us away, we intend to attain it. But even after this arduous pursuit do you question yourself, ‘Where is my happiness?’
What makes attaining happiness difficult? Why does it disappear when we think we have captured it?
Where is my happiness?
During one of my darkest moments, I accidentally stumbled upon a revelation that is one of the primary teachings of Eastern and stoic philosophy.
Where is my happiness? – The beacon of light amidst darkness
The situation: The hold of grief
‘Where is my happiness?’ At this point in my life, seeking an answer to this question seemed like a luxury. I could have even lived with a little less pain. The heaviness of grief had engulfed me. The weight had lasted for so long now that I had reached a state where I was tired of being sad. If I could explain what I was feeling, it was nothing. A dark emptiness that just made me numb. While the exterior represented a human being, my mind would describe myself as a lump of mass that just existed.
The tiredness was heavy enough that I would only move if necessary. I was barely expressive and had isolated myself. I blinked slowly, my eyes watched as if staring at nothing, and I would only speak if I had to in a few broken sentences.
Then, one day, I was forced to talk to someone who did not know about my situation. There was no escaping this interaction. I did not want to explain my situation or have the energy to do so. I was afraid of receiving unsolicited advice like some tacky motivational bumper stickers you might see on cars. Advice like – ‘Be strong’, ‘You should face the challenges of life’, ‘Be positive’, or the age-old classic, ‘Don’t be sad’.
So now I had to do the most difficult thing imaginable. I had to act normal. I gathered whatever strength I had and began my interaction. But soon, cracks appeared in my performance, and the person noticed something was off. But I kept at my performance with the last fibre of my strength, pretending I was normal.
It was exhausting.
But as we kept interacting, we occasionally had a good banter. We even shared a laugh. And this was not a pretend laugh. At that moment, I was genuinely happy. But things went back to the way they were quickly. Well, the normal that was my state of abyss. After the interaction ended, I went back into my cocoon of darkness. The grief returned, and I became numb again.
The beacon of light
The interaction kept bothering me long after it had ended. How did I laugh? I did not pretend to laugh or be joyful. I was feeling joyful at that moment. I was happy. It was the beacon of life within the darkness of my life. But it was temporary as that moment was preceded and succeeded by intense sadness. So now, where is my happiness? How did it appear out of nowhere and then suddenly vanish?
But this was not unusual. Being joyful is not a consistent experience, and neither is being sad. Sadness often has bits and pieces of laughter and joyful moments. They may be few and spaced out quite a bit, but they occur. Similarly, even periods of happiness often have moments of sadness and pain.
I have witnessed funerals where close family members have shared joyful moments with each other. Even during their devastated state, certain situations, interactions or remembrances would create these much-needed happy moments, which would again quickly get consumed by sadness.
But how do these seemingly opposite things exist together? How do we unconsciously switch between sadness and happiness?
Where is my happiness?
I realised that happiness appeared and vanished according to the fickle entity at the root of its existence and disappearance – thoughts.
The root cause of unhappiness
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and a stoic philosopher. His life was tragic. He wrote his contemplations in personal journal entries later published in a book called ‘Meditations’. In a journal entry, he described through his experience how our happiness is a direct product of our thoughts.
Even though we think our happiness depends on attaining just this next thing, it always feels that happiness is one step ahead of us no matter how hard we strive to grasp it. For a brief period through significant moments like achievements, recognitions, monetary gains or a dozen other things we work for, we might feel we are happy. Yet, it is only a matter of time before we do not feel good and might ask the question again, ‘Where is my happiness?’
So why does happiness keep evading us?
Because our happiness does not depend on what happens to us but on what we think about what happens to us.
Let’s do a quick exercise to see how our thoughts affect our happiness.
Exercise
Let’s do a quick exercise to see how our thoughts affect our happiness.
Sit in a comfortable place. Once you are ready, I will ask you to close your eyes. But before that, read this.
In this short exercise, we will sit still for three minutes with our eyes closed. You can put a timer on your clock or phone to alert you. We are not going to meditate. We are just going to sit with our thoughts.
After you close your eyes, let your mind wander. All you have to do is observe the thoughts arising in your mind and see how they make you feel. How do these thoughts affect your being?
Ready?
Are you worried about sitting with your thoughts? It will be okay. It is just for three minutes.
Go ahead, close your eyes.
.
.
.
How was it?
Boring? Scary? Sad? Happy? Or a mix of various emotions?
If you saw, you would have noticed how you felt different emotions because of various thoughts even though your situation was the same throughout those three minutes.
You can analyse the world of emotions generated and collapsed within your mind. Happiness and sadness are created and destroyed within minutes.
The dark controller of happiness
According to research by Professor Fred Luskin of Stanford University, an adult can have about 60,000 thoughts daily. As much as 90% of these thoughts could be repetitive, with most being negative.
1000s of thoughts per day. And how many can we recall or are even conscious of?
During most of our day, our mind has hundreds of thoughts triggered by current situations, past instances, worry about the uncertainty of the future, and imagined scenarios. They control how we feel and our happiness, but at the end of the day, we can barely even recall a handful of our thoughts. And it is not just the recollection. We are not even aware of this dark controller (thoughts) while it is creating havoc in the happiness of our lives. Our thoughts control how we feel, what we speak, how we act, and what decisions we take, thus dominating our entire lives.
We rarely notice and acknowledge the thoughts in our minds and how they make us feel. If we were conscious of our thoughts all the time and could control them completely, wouldn’t we be thinking good thoughts all the time? Or using our thoughts productively to progress in our lives rather than hurting ourselves?
If we want to be happy, wouldn’t being aware of our thoughts and managing them help us achieve that?
Marcus Aurelius says the happiness of our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts.
So, how do we begin to manage our thoughts? How do we improve their quality to thus affect the happiness of our lives? But first, how can we become aware of the thoughts before they begin devastating our lives and destroying our happiness?
How can we get back in the driver’s seat and not let our thoughts drive us down a valley of suffering?
What can we do that would stop us from saying, where is my happiness?
Where is my happiness? : Managing the root cause of unhappiness
Step 1: The Awareness Point
The first step in managing and taking control of the quality of our thoughts would be to become aware of them. When we are aware of the bombardment of our thoughts that were unconsciously controlling our lives and how we feel, we are a step closer to managing them.
But how do we become aware of our thoughts? By using what I call the ‘Awareness point’ to our advantage. Let me explain with an example.
Imagine a person is doing their laundry. Let us see how their thoughts might unfurl. Take note of the thoughts mentioned in bold.
Alright, time to do the laundry. I have all my clothes…
damn, some of these clothes do smell weird. Do I smell bad? Am I not hygienic?.. during that event when I was all sweaty, I could see the look in those people’s eyes. I sure was smelling funny. God, are there any more ways I could embarrass myself….
Hey! Where is the detergent? ….Ohh, There it is ..
Where were you hiding Mr. Detergent? I need to wash my clothes. Yeah, the smelly clothes, the way I smell….bad.. this is just…
I forgot to buy a new detergent. It is almost empty.
But it will last for this time. I have to make it last. I was supposed to buy the detergent last week with my groceries. Look who keeps procrastinating everything. Mr. all promises and no action. Is there anything I do on time… pending simple tasks.. well, what about my life goals… where am I on those? Am I wasting my life…..
In the above example, you can see the barrage of thoughts passing through this person’s mind. His thought process was unconscious, while it controlled how he felt and his happiness. But during this scenario, there were moments when the person jolted back to reality (marked in bold.)
These moments are what I call the ‘Awareness Points’ in our thought process. These are the instances where we are aware of what we are thinking and in control of our thoughts. But if we are not vigilant, these awareness points pass away, and we are stuck back into mindless thinking, thus letting the poor quality of our thoughts ruin our happiness.
But when we notice these awareness points, we can pause and become aware of the moment we can take control of our thoughts, even if it is just for a while. You can read more about the awareness point in the article here about how overthinking affects our happiness.
Step 2: Swapping our thoughts with realistic and believable versions.
After we have caught our awareness point, we can use this instance to pause and switch our thoughts to more realistic versions.
As you noticed in the above example, the negative aspect of that mind created false scenarios that were emotional reactions and not rational.
I promise, and then I do not follow up with action
I am wasting my life
I always procrastinate
I lack personal hygiene
…
If we are not aware, these irrational wanderings of our mind govern the quality of our thoughts and thus affect the happiness of our lives. But now, as we are conscious of them using the ‘Awareness point’, we can immediately switch the thoughts to the more realistic version of our lives.
I promise, and then I do not follow up with action -> Is there any evidence to back this? What are some contrary evidences of my life where I kept my promises? I might have faltered sometimes, but that is human.
I am wasting my life -> Everything is a process. Look at all the things I have achieved by now that I only dreamt of a few years back. Sure, I have other aims, but everything takes time. I am aligned and progressing.
I always procrastinate -> Always? That cannot be true as I would have never gotten anything done. And even if I have procrastinated before, had I not finished my job within time most days?
I lack personal hygiene -> Yeah, yeah. That is probably true. [Joke]
Using the above steps, we can begin managing the quality of our thoughts and thus improving the happiness of our lives.
I hope in the future, whenever we ask the question, ‘Where is my happiness?’, we can answer, ‘Right here, in the quality of my thoughts that I can manage.’
Love
Kartikey