Contemplating Happiness and Unhappiness
I've found recently that my thinking vis-a-vis happiness is evolving...
The mysterious character of happiness has irked me for years -- the way it's possible to be happy in the middle of a catastrophe, or miserable in the midst of calm and plenty -- and I thought of it as an issue of understanding happiness. (I used to often quip that I was sure there were hermits living in caves who were happier than I was.)
A wise woman once defined happiness to me as "accepting where you are", and I think there's a lot to that -- but it also opens the door on a problem with happiness: when people are too accepting of their present condition, does this leave us with insufficient incentive to work for changes that would actually be worthwhile?
I started to think of it like particles in physics: sometimes they have forces on them, sometimes they don't. When a particle has no net force on it, it doesn't move; when there's a net force, it moves in that direction. (Particles have it easy; humans are forever worrying that they're not where they're "supposed to be"; particles are always where they're supposed to be. Even when something bumps them toward a new location, they're not really "supposed" to be already at the new location -- they're supposed to be right on the trajectory to it...)
Is unhappiness a better guide than happiness? They're always saying, in football, that they learn more from the games they lose...
Of course, philosophical musings like this can turn around and bite you; there I was, getting ready to go running, this morning, finding my shoes and so on. I wasn't really in the mood for it; in fact, I was distinctly unenthused. And I'm thinking to myself, "I'm not very happy, just at the moment, you know..." and a snarky little voice answered back: "Unhappiness is a better guide than happiness..." ("Shut up" I answered back.)
The mysterious character of happiness has irked me for years -- the way it's possible to be happy in the middle of a catastrophe, or miserable in the midst of calm and plenty -- and I thought of it as an issue of understanding happiness. (I used to often quip that I was sure there were hermits living in caves who were happier than I was.)
A wise woman once defined happiness to me as "accepting where you are", and I think there's a lot to that -- but it also opens the door on a problem with happiness: when people are too accepting of their present condition, does this leave us with insufficient incentive to work for changes that would actually be worthwhile?
I started to think of it like particles in physics: sometimes they have forces on them, sometimes they don't. When a particle has no net force on it, it doesn't move; when there's a net force, it moves in that direction. (Particles have it easy; humans are forever worrying that they're not where they're "supposed to be"; particles are always where they're supposed to be. Even when something bumps them toward a new location, they're not really "supposed" to be already at the new location -- they're supposed to be right on the trajectory to it...)
Is unhappiness a better guide than happiness? They're always saying, in football, that they learn more from the games they lose...
Of course, philosophical musings like this can turn around and bite you; there I was, getting ready to go running, this morning, finding my shoes and so on. I wasn't really in the mood for it; in fact, I was distinctly unenthused. And I'm thinking to myself, "I'm not very happy, just at the moment, you know..." and a snarky little voice answered back: "Unhappiness is a better guide than happiness..." ("Shut up" I answered back.)