Do you want to be happy?
It seems to me that people don't want to be happy. This is seen in saying like, "people live lives of quiet desperation".
As much as I bitch and whine about my depression, I ought to still feel happy. I have nothing really causing me distress like loans debt, and such.
But, it seems that my question is ill-phrased. People do things that they think will make them happy. And here is the problem. Many people are unwilling to change their habits or hand over their rudder to someone else until the problem is too large that medicine has to intervene.
I have witnessed this issue in my own life. I go to doctors to get better; but, fail to listen to them and order medicine online and try and be my own doctor. I don't think this is exclusive to me, as other people can be more headstrong or stubborn to seek help.
So, how do you solve this problem of what I believe is most succinctly outlined as individualism clashing with authority?
As much as I bitch and whine about my depression, I ought to still feel happy. I have nothing really causing me distress like loans debt, and such.
But, it seems that my question is ill-phrased. People do things that they think will make them happy. And here is the problem. Many people are unwilling to change their habits or hand over their rudder to someone else until the problem is too large that medicine has to intervene.
I have witnessed this issue in my own life. I go to doctors to get better; but, fail to listen to them and order medicine online and try and be my own doctor. I don't think this is exclusive to me, as other people can be more headstrong or stubborn to seek help.
So, how do you solve this problem of what I believe is most succinctly outlined as individualism clashing with authority?
Comments (65)
One part says: "There is no authority on happiness."
Another: "Then why ain't I already happy as can be?"
This is a simple misunderstanding. One wants what one does not have; when i have run out of toilet paper, I want some, and put it on the shopping list. Likewise one wants to be happy iff one is unhappy. People eating ice cream do not wish they had ice cream, and happy people do not want.
This suggests happiness in being unhappy.
Quoting Hanover
Well, unenlightened-san spelled it out for me and you, it seems.
Well, like I said, there's no authority on being happy here in the West. So, I see that as the primary issue worth discussing here.
That is the complex thing about depression, sometimes it does not require an external stimuli to trigger depressed moods. This is why in certain instances we look at the chemical imbalance in the person.
Quoting Wallows
This is true, and we can take Facebook for example in this situation. Very often people document their lives on social media to demonstrate to others that they are, "living their best life." One article I read coined the term "false Happiness Dilemma." Very often people use social media to mask the torment they're currently enduring in their life. Very often people use social media or any other internet outlet that requires social interaction to either mitigate or mask their internal problems and very often serious cases end up leading to suicide all because as you've said, they allowed the problems to get so big to where it doesn't get addressed to the point where one takes their own life.
Read:https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/people-are-revealing-truth-behind-their-happy-looking-social-media-posts-its-heartbreaking.html
Quoting Wallows
That is the key there. What is preventing you from listening? Remember therapists are not gods, they are not endowed with supernatural powers that can give you mental renewal. Therapists are echo chambers where they provide an ear, and an objective mind outside of your own. The bold resonates with me because this is the quality of one who self-medicates. I'll admit I've done that when my mother died and even so when my dad died and its a wonder how I endured school. However, self-medication leads down to a rabbit hole that if you're not careful, can lead into an abyss where there are no walls to grapple, or ropes to hang on to. But yes, even us professionals who "ought to know better" we too, suffer from mental distress, because our profession has nothing to do with the fact that we are under skin deep, human.
Quoting Wallows
The goal to happiness requires unique roads that weave differently for us, and therefore in order to navigate through that path it is a journey we must figure out within us. If clinicians had the blueprint there would be no need for therapists.
Haha. I interpret your post in good spirits.
So, (truth) or "happiness" is a pathless land. How, do you even relay this profound and shaking message (originally from Krishnamurti) to a struggling individual?
I am consuming some water, is that enough?
Not really; but, beats dying from dehydration. Well, I just love drinking water. Wallow wallow.
I didn't used to be happy, I'm happy now. Did I achieve or engineer this state of happiness? No. It happened. Is it permanent? Probably not.
No it is not pathless, and I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying it is a path that you must travel. None of us can say for certain what makes this or that person happy. these are things you must navigate and find yourself.
Quoting Wallows
I've never told an individual the road to happiness is pathless which is why I said:
Quoting Anaxagoras
I said the above in response to:
Quoting Wallows
So, in other words I'm saying nobody online can solve an individual's problem finding happiness because our own happiness we seek is unique which means that there is no universal blueprint we can offer because our own distress is unique to us. This is why I said the winding road is unique to us which we must travel.
Sorry, I just took your response and kind of distorted it, my bad. No worries, I still think that happiness is a pathless land, just, as you say, is a highly individualistic goal.
A lot of thorny issues have come out of our short exchange. Do you think it should be therapy first, and then if that doesn't help seek medication. Or the route most traveled, as in medication first, and then therapy?
To be fair, there are plenty of things to be distressed about that are found universally in every human life because they are structurally inherent to human life.
Things like loan debts, insurance fees, disease diagnoses, etc are empirical phenomena that may or may not occur. But the situation in which these empirical phenomena are continually threatening to manifest should not be ignored. That it is possible for bad things to occur (even if they are not currently present), is nevertheless a bad thing.
No, not ignored. To borrow from Stoicism, they are things over which we have no control over, and thus should not be distressed about, at least until they arise. One can or ought to practice negative visualization and realize that they are part of life. What you're doing is presenting a negative visualization and overgeneralizing about their fatalistic impact on one's life. That's a cognitive distortion if I'm to borrow the term from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Happiness is the goal, the path is individualistic. Whenever you have a goal it is not pathless.
Quoting Wallows
Whenever medication is involved a lot of factors come into play, and as I've said before I refrain from making online assessments. However, as a general rule seeking out therapy and just simply discussing the mental anguish that you deal with is a starter. A therapist can make the assessment for themselves if they decide to introduce medication in addition to psychotherapy. Unfortunately, for situations like bi-polar disorder medication in addition to behavioral treatment may be in order, to supplant the existing imbalance. It depends on a case by case assessment of the individual.
There's a bit in Zen and the Art, where he talks about the mechanic attaining peace of mind when the bike is in good running order. One might say that to be entirely happy when the world is in crisis, likewise to be content with a second rate philosophy, is to be out of step with one's life. A good therapist's happiness is the client making progress; a good philosopher's happiness is a confusion resolved.
[quote=Greta Thunberg]Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” Thunberg said, “But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.[/quote]
Don't be happy! When times are desperate it is madness to be happy, and sanity to be desperate. Therefore be desperate. But do not be 'quietly desperate', because to be quietly desperate is to pretend to happiness instead of acting to achieve it. Fix the goddam bike, and let happiness sort itself out!
I am about as happy and content as anyone I know.
Right, like I need Aristotle to give me a lecture on happiness.
:rofl:
Threaten him into being happy. I love it.
Cheer up, or I'll kick your bloody teeth in. You don't want me and Bitter Crank turning up at your door with baseball bats, do you, @Wallows?
Have a bit of that ultra-violence, eh? What are they putting in your milk these days?
It's not my task to right the wrongs of the past. Climate change, AI taking my job, and all the other things that are there in the background was not part of my baggage when I was born.
Maybe I didn't read the fine print of my social contract?
:lol:
Vellocet, synthmesc, drencrom... it's all good, my droog.
Time spent worrying about things one has no control over is time utterly wasted.
But, our forum psychologist @unenlightened and the Swede Greta Thunberg are telling me that I must care about these things, or have some sort of Jesus complex, or some such matter.
Set fire to it, my droog.
I wallow.
Then I'll do it for you. You wallow, and I'll save the day. If I burn away your worldly attachments, you'll rise up like a phoenix.
And as soon as you do, I'll be there to shoot you down, my droog. :smile:
You need to seek help. xD
No, I don't. If I did, it would be out of interest, not necessity.
Google "self-sufficiency", if you have to. Or, you know, you could actually try thinking for yourself.
Ahh, so the issue reveals itself or is manifest. I know what's best for me, therefore, who is some bloke called Aristotle or Epictetus, all about. I don't fancy to listen to any authority on me and mine alone, happiness.
You haven't the yarbles for a drat, you droopy malchick.
My dear sir, we are all drowning in shit, and most of it is other people's shit. Shuddup and grab a shovel. No one is impressed by your innocence. Quoting Tzeentch But time spent worrying about whether or not one has any control over things is equally wasted. What is not time wasted - time on happy pills?
Quoting unenlightened
You are mistaken if you don't think my depression isn't real. And, I am disabled, so I get to wallow in my own shit for a change. Sometimes my mother dumps her shit on me, and the depression is exacerbated and graceful wallowing ensues.
Why do you assume I have such knowledge? Whether I do or don't, the whole point was that it isn't necessary. But if I'm interested, I'll look further into it. I'm interested in a lot of things, so it will probably be added to a very long list. Thanks for the reference to reading material, but be under no illusion: that's all it is.
I think you have one too many negatives there - if I do think your depression isn't real, then I'm not mistaken?
Anyway, stop wallowing and start shovelling, you are allowed to cry while you shovel.
But with every tear that falls, me and Crank will take another swing.
*Wallowing intensifies.*
Using Ludwig Van like that. Hahaha. How is your cat? Are you feeding her lots of good things or starving her?
You needn't tak' it any further, sir! You've proved to me that all this ultra-violence and killing is wrong! Wrong and terribly wrong! I've learnt me lesson, sir! I see now what I've never seen before! I'm cured! Praise God!
Quoting Wallows
She's good.
Good with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Oh just make her fat and plumpy. She is a good cat to put up with someone like you...
Anyway, why should I? There's no authority on the matter, and I am entitled to my own peace and tranquility.
Doesn't seem to be working too well from where I'm standing. You still seem troubled. Maybe it's time to try out a different technique.
See my latest thread.
I'm full of it ain't I?
What are you talking about? We [i]all[/I] need Aristotle, otherwise how can any of us ever know anything about happiness? Someone ought to act to rectify this great travesty, posthaste. What are all of these newly weds doing wasting time on their honeymoon? They know nothing of happiness. [I]They should be reading Aristotle![/I]
Mother just given birth? [I]Take that newborn out of her arms and replace it with a book written by Aristotle![/I]
Why should you stop wallowing in shit? Oh, no reason.Whatever you're happy with.
As they say, whatever floats yer boat. I yam what I yam and that's all there is to me.