Can true happiness ever be achieved, or is it an ongoing pursuit without a definitive end?
Can true happiness ever be achieved, or is it an ongoing pursuit without a definitive end?
45 comments
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Long time ago I heard/read somewhere that true happiness/happy life/being in general happy at all times is not possible and people who are not in a great place get frustrated by never achieving this and seeing that it feels like everyone else has something they don't.
What true happiness often seems to be (for most happy people) is actually being content
Happiness comes from being content with your life, not constant feeling of joy. When you are content with your life and situation, you'll enjoy your life more. You'll be "happy" with your life. And if you are content with your life you suddenly enjoy small things that add up to it.
I'm probably not explaining this very well, but hope you get something out of this comment!
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That makes sense. Happiness is a state of mind.
It's like when you hear about people going through tragedy who come to terms with their circumstances. Some people might find that delusional, but does it matter if the person truly feels content?
I like what you said about it not being a constant state of joy, too.
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I track my mood in a journal and each day and I've given myself four options for my overall mood was for the day. The options are:
Happy Okay Tired Bad
Perhaps counterintuitively, I mark the majority of my days as "happy" for the very reason you've described.
The vast majority of days, I'm not "happy" by most people's standards. I am content. But I think it's actually quite useful to call contentedness happiness.
For me, marking a day as anything other than "happy" requires some negativity to enter and for it to persist long enough that it spoils the overall contentedness.
For example, even if I wake up exhausted, depressed and otherwise miserable, if I take a nice long shower, have a cuddle with my husband and watch a show I love, I might still be able to salvage that day from "bad" to "okay"
I think it's important that people don't treat mood as a fixed immovable state. It's almost always a signal that should be acted upon.
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Do you find that a mood journal is helpful? Why do you track it to begin with.
It sounds like a decent idea to simplify it like that. So many days I think that my life sucks when really everything isn't so bad and I am happy quite often.
Only problem if I were to apply your scale to myself is I would mark every other day as tired lmao. Why do you have that one as a separate category if you can be tired while experiencing these other moods?
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Thank you for this! I never thought about it that way before.
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I am not a great believer in long term happiness. I studied under a wise Zen master for two years that said the following:
Happiness and sadness are fleeting emotions. We are only expected to experience them for snapshots in time. A sense of peace and acceptance can, however, be achievable.
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As buddhists say; you can't become happy you can only be happy
I think it can be achieved but it may not be what most people think. I believie happines is not a goal you reach but rather a state that is realized. It's when you're satisfied with what you have and stop putting conditions on you happiness. Life is unsatisfactory - that's what most are dealing with rather than unhappiness.
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This is the philosophy that lead to my name. If you base your happiness on achieving goals or avoiding suffering, you'll likely find happiness fleeting. You can look at people who most would consider great examples of success and still find miserable people and suicides. My guess for some of them is they get there, are happy for a time, and then when it eventually fades as they get used to their new position in life, they either think there's nothing more they can chase or that something must be wrong with them if they can't be happy and start feeling even more miserable because they have the problem of not being happy.
Happiness isn't a reward for achieving a goal, it's a decision we make about what we feel about our current circumstances. If you're not happy, you can change that by adjusting your circumstances or by adjusting your expectations. Both of those are worthwhile pursuits, though IMO the second one is more important because it will allow you to be happy on the way and after you've made the changes you'd like in your life.
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You can look at people who most would consider great examples of success and still find miserable people and suicides
Human happiness rises to about 130k USD a year. After that it is diminishing returns. You can point to all the tortured billionaires you want but there is plenty of misery in being poor.
they either think there’s nothing more they can chase
There must be hundreds of reachable achievements and skills the average Westerner can pursue. You want a challenge? Go learn violin. I will see you in about 12k-14k hours.
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That's common philosophy. Only the most materialistic philosophy like consumerism will promote the never-ending pursuit of acquisition or achievement to happyness.
That's the problem of our western societies in fact: they promote the never-ending pursuit of success, wealth, or fame. To actually be happy, you "merely" need to get out of this culture.
Still, and although some people can be happy with almost nothing, most people will still need basic needs fulfilled to be happy : food, home, and socialisation (and safety).
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Having seen both cultures I know which I will always choose. I like hot water when I shower, I like not seeing sewage in the streets, I like building creating and innovating, I like not being torn between mindless repetitive work on one hand and lazy do everything slow on the other. It is pretty easy for people in the privileged West to be romantic about the grinding poverty that are Buddhist nations.
But hey it isn't like I matter. Let's look at where the net migration patterns say.
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INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER
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The pursuit is the happiness. To be happy you need a goal that you can get closer to. Once you reach the goal, the happiness ends and you need a new goal.
This is why you should have big goals. Goals that are attainable, but take a long time to reach.
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I might be a man of simple pleasures but I have been in this state for a couple years now. I don't think you should see it as your highest happiness point ever, but rather everything in a life viewed together. There are days that my happiness dips or peaks, but all in all life is just so good. I earn a low yearly wage and work my dream job part time (social worker), I live in a modest appartment with running hot and cold water, a fridge and a washing machine, so the basics are covered. I lost close relatives 2 years in a row, but life was terrifying and unfair before and it still is, so other then missing them these losses don't really affect me. We can all die right now in an instant, no fair trial just poof and you're gone. Realizing and accepting this has taken away almost all of the fears you can associate with that. My pursuit is now maintaining true happiness, so in that way it is ongoing for me.
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This post made me remember things I had forgotten.
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Reminds me of one of my favorite HONY posts. I try to absorb this kind of energy and remember it when I’m feeling down.
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It's called lifestyle creep. It's never that you're in a better place today than you were yesterday, it's always that you could be in a better place tomorrow.
And it's both right and wrong. We make ourselves miserable by always wanting more, but also a lot of us have less than we deserve.
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We don’t make ourselves miserable by always wanting more. We make ourselves miserable by telling ourselves we’ll be miserable without more.
I’m always building more and more in my life, and since I started doing that I’ve been happier than ever before.
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Happiness is not a fish that you can catch.
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The people who study this tend to talk about it as if it were an aspect of health. It requires daily maintenance. It isn't like if you get x, y, and z then you will be happy and happy until death.
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To your point it's not a video game objective. Happiness is being mostly happy and an inside job. It's not external. However happy people create other happy people.
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It isn't very fun being around miserable ones. Especially when they decide that you are the reason why their life is terrible.
Plenty of people will make you pay for the sin of being in their general area.
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Knowing that family is safe sound and happy and wants to see me as much as I want to see them is a pretty big boost, as is working towards a thing that I value and respect. It's not very exciting but it is happy.
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I think true happiness is, almost contradictorily, found in the process of achieving it. Humans always strive for more by their nature. Once you achieve your goal, you'll eventually feel stagnant and set something higher. Perhaps the task itself is what we truly enjoy. Whether you think that's bad or not is up to you. On the extremes, some are driven to be more and more charitable, while others strive to be richer. Most people will set smaller goals and just want to get a more comfortable job or have better relationships with the people in their lives.
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Happiness does come to the person that looks for it. You can travel the world, experience it's wonders and do many things. Get the high paying job and move to the fancy city.
But there is some guy that never left your home town that is perfectly happy to work his low paying "shitty" job and all he needs is a cuppa to be happy.
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I think you are make sloth a virtue.
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True happiness happens when you're not looking for it. It comes in all shapes and sizes. The other day I went for a walk and it was a Vanilla Sky, Monet reference from the movie. My heart swelled, I felt pure joy/happiness. Out of nowhere, it was so intense. I hope it will happen again but I do know (in my life) its not achievable if you seek it out.
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I'm convinced happiness is genetic.
Some people are some people aren't.
I've lived my life in pretty much the exact way I have wanted and done more than most. If I could erase myself from existence I would instantly.
I think the people that are most ambitious and adventurous are the least happy. If you are happy then you are content and don't go searching for stuff. So the most successful people tend to be the most unhappy. Thought some people do love the competition they can be happy.
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Absolutely. You could have it right now if your expectations were in line with your status quo.
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Happiness is an emotion not a state. You fee it when you are doing something that makes you feel that way.
My work is challenging and can be stressful. I wouldn't say I was happy while trying to solve a tricky problem but I enjoy that aspect regardless.
Do things that make you happy. But you can't expect to be happy all the time.
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I think true happiness is just a momentary lapse of reason.
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Is reason a path to unhappiness?
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No idea, I just wanted to quote that Pink Floyd album.
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It's possible depending on the person. I probably won't get there, but I know what it's like because I was there before.
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We aren't built to be satisfied. Our survival in a prehistorical context depended on our constant vigilance in the face of the ever-present risk of death from myriad dangers. That has required of us to evolve into fearful, violent creatures. Nothing forces us to act that way in a safer, less existentially precarious context, but there's a lot of hard-wiring for us to fight against. I think so long as you're willing to face that skittish, aggressive, hoarding nature and try to calm it down and perpetually remind it that it's going to be ok, you're on your way to some pretty solid contentment.
Of course that first requires that you've somehow magicked your way to a reliably full belly and roof over your head, which... well good luck
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Mu
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