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Pursuit of happiness is a lie
“I am not happy.” How many times do we hear that? How many times do we say that? How many times do we not say that when that is the only thought in our head – I am not happy? That is okay. It is okay to say out loud that I am not happy. It is okay to be sad. If we are sad, we can be sad. There is absolutely no need to be happy. This is a pressure we can choose not to feel. Pursuing happiness is one of the big lies that we have been taught and thus we are running after a lie without understanding what that is.
What is happiness?
These musings are not to define happiness, it has layers of subjectivity and individualism that are out of the scope of this essay. For some happiness can just be a reduced level of negative affect and for others, it can be an increasing magnitude of ecstasy. I do not look to measure happiness, rather just examine it.
Happiness is fleeting, just like sadness. Hedonic treadmill, or hedonic adaptation, is the fancy word used for that. Hedonic treadmill is a theory that people have a baseline level of happiness which they fall back to irrespective of the intensity of happiness spike. Nothing can be too good or too bad, almost always these extremes settle to a middle stable level. So why run after such a transient thing.
Chasing a high
I understand why we do so. The compulsion is extremely high, we see others ‘happy’ and the fear of missing out makes us indulge in it; we are pressurized by the moment and our surroundings, yet we still seem to be deprived of ‘the happiness’ that we crave so much. Congratulations, we gave in to that fleeting rush of dopamine and feel a high, now what? We crave that happiness to such an extent that we run for the next thing that gives us a high. Every time that rush goes away, we feel something is lacking. And this goes on, and on, and on.
It is not just the positive spikes that cause such a feeling. We have enough negative experiences; we start getting used to everything falling around us. We build up walls, to protect ourselves. Ultimately, when the negative stimulus is gone and things look up, we cannot let down our guard because we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ladies and gentlemen, you are running helplessly on the hedonic treadmill at its maximum speed with start and stop every few moments. We suffer. The thought ‘I am not happy’ takes home. Pursuing happiness can never be the goal.
A virtuous life
Then what? I believe happiness is just the side effect of a life lived well. And that is where the trick is; we have no idea what a good life is, but we can start somewhere. We can start by choosing to accept what we have right now and be grateful. We can understand how a lot of things that bring negative effects are not under our control, so we choose to not be bothered by them. We can choose and help ourselves and the people around us and be generous. We can call a friend with whom we have not talked in a while and just ask how they are. We can just tell someone how beautiful they are or how safe they make us feel. Start small. Start well. Forget about running after that rush of happiness; happiness is irrelevant. That is what, I believe, makes a good life. A life lived not for a return of anything but a choice that I want to live a good life, a virtuous life.
I am not happy
Is the pursuit of happiness justified? Maybe. But it becomes imperative that we distinguish between actual happiness from an ideal state. Happiness that follows a virtuous life would be persist because it is dependent on nothing but ourselves. Happiness that is not intrinsic, rather hunted from external, would eventually conclude with us saying, “I am not happy.”.
“A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds that drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light.“
Seneca, Letter to Lucilius XXVII
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