There are so many scientific surveys, discussions and even new psychological sectors about happiness. How to be happy, what to invest our energy in during our years, what counts at the end of our lives etc. It is important for us, there are no wars now (yet, who knows), no bigger recession in developed countries. We have time to not just pray for a life, but to pray for a good one. We want to be happy. I was just watching a TED talk about a 75-year long study on happiness (below).
Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life?
It revealed what we are already aware of nowadays, that it is not about money, not about possessions, it is not about your career: it is about love. It is about your social relationships, being together with and leaning on others. Loneliness kills, and as it turns out, it also damages your health and your brain activity.
However, I started thinking - perhaps poorly, now I am a little insecure as I have been living completely alone for the last eight years and I am not a very outgoing or extrovert person, either. So I started thinking about a question this guy in the video asked. If it is an age-old knowledge, why aren't we still doing it? He said it is because building relationships is a time-consuming, confusing process stretching over our whole life, plus we can't see the results per se. He basically said we are lazy.
Well, I don't agree with that. One explanation that I can imagine as a reason for most people that the idea of "wealth and fame" is so deeply embedded in our society that even if we know consciously that it is not what makes us happy, we still want to achieve it unconsciously because that is "the dream". Kind of like we secretly all want to look like models, even though we all know now how unhealthy and non feminine that is. For sure, it is hard work to get rid of our social hypnoses. We really have to be very conscious of our own thinking and present in our actions, and possibly keep ourselves as far from any media (especially social media) as possible,
Anyway, my concern is not about this, at least not now. It is about myself, mine being the only mind and thinking that I can thoroughly study or follow.
And the question is: WHAT IF WE DON'T CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY?
If I was asked to recall the happiest moments of my life from the past ten-fifteen years, I would have a straight-away answer - I clearly know what they were. One was that month I spent in Danbury, Connecticut in 2011 with my great grandmother's brother and his family. Although, I had regular contact with my second cousins, who are my age, I was pretty much spending all my time with Karcsi and his wife because I was living at their house. We did not do much, at least not what I remember. What were most memorable and valuable for me were the everyday shopping, discussions at the dinner table, waking up to see them, listening to their stories etc. The second happiest time in my present-life is similar to that, it was this two months that I spent in Ohio and California this fall/winter. The first six weeks I was at my father's. This was the longest time ever that I spent with him. Or my half-sister. I really got to know them, we talked a lot. And again, we didn't do too much. We went volunteering every weekend, to church, to the dog park two times a day. And I was really happy. And then, I spent three weeks with my grandfather's cousin and his wife in Newbury Park, California. Again, a couple over 75. I know, I have some weird perverse affection towards older people, but that is another story. Also, the reason my happiest moments are not from my relationships is probably that I had a very love and affection-deprived childhood (and of course, I am fucked up since then but who isn't), and I am longing for filling up that whole.
Anyway, my point is that I didn't just hear it and learn it but I myself experienced that love is really what makes you happy. It is a totally different kind of happiness than being in the state of "Flow" (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), for example. I love my job (or what I am doing recently), I am constantly in that state. I also know what it is like to have a lot of money, and it is pretty cool, buying and having things and choices indeed makes you happy. However, happiness from our relationships is a totally different kind of happiness. It is not even comparable. It is much better. Something, that doesn't just make you happy for the moment, but charges you, fills you up and stays with you forever. It is a real investment, it is what probably the word happiness actually wants to describe.
And still. I asked myself: Why am I not spending all my time with these people then? I could move there. Being afraid of getting bored of it is also not the point because I could just move around, I have lots of relatives and friends all over the world. You can always find love if you are open to it.
But my problem is that I am not sure I want to CHOOSE HAPPINESS. In these moments, I was happy and I was also useful because I made others happy and helped them a lot. But I was still quite passive. It was a great retreat emotionally, one month of this fills you up for a year. But then, at the same time, I have so much more in me.
I mean, yes, having to live out that freedom and energy that is buzzing inside me would risk having a relationship (and I do not mean any kind of sexual or polygamous freedom and energy), would risk keeping real close relationships within my family or having my own family, would risk my health, would risk living longer and seeing my grandchildren grow up, would risk me being happy at all in the long term.
And still, this horrifies me but maybe that is not the thing I was born for. I know that people hate if you say you were born for something big or you are more than others and want to stand out. I know they say every one member of our generation (the Millennials) thinks that. That we are destined to be famous. Or destined to be anything at all. It is a luxury of our time to say that. And our huge ego. I know all of these.
And still, I feel that I have this energy or potential inside me that I have to live out. I do not know if I will ever be accepted or known but I don't really care. I wonder if it is similar to when repentant people say they had a calling. Some think they are crazy people, but I am okay with that because I am a 100% sure I am crazy, too. And I don't mind it, at all.
So I might have a calling. I don't know what to call it, it is not that I want to be unhappy, be sick, suffer and die at the age of 50. I really really don't want that. I really hope I can still be happy and healthy and live to be a hundred. I also really want a family, I want to be a mother. But not now. Because I have this energy inside me and I have to live it. It is happiness, though. Happiness in not necessarily being happy for me, however paradoxical that is. Because I think if I waste this energy I will never be happy. Never be really happy.
...I began to succumb to magical thinking. And for a while, I was actually happy. But I was happy as a fool is happy. Happiness is not the natural human condition. (Woody Allen: Magic in the Moonlight)
I feel that I have to work, and fight, and try, and try, and try until I have no more of that energy.
I am so curious what other people think about this topic. What do you think?
