What is happiness? How to be happy?
Hedonism
Every little action taken by any living creature (which has the reward system) serves for having pleasure. Either directly or indirectly. Of course, vaccination isn’t an enjoyable process, but the end result is to have a better immune system and not catching virus. This means staying healthy: being healthy we can do a lot of pleasurable things, that we’re not capable of being ill. So, even if at the first sight it could seem counter-intuitive, but even a painful syringe shot is made for pleasure purposes. We are hedonists by nature.
The word “hēdonē” means “pleasure” in greek.
What is pleasure? It’s the response of our reward system to some actions taken by us. It’s chemistry of our brain. Yes, in fact, we bend over backwards for making our brain to produce a little bit more micrograms of dopamine (hormone, which makes us feel better). For this reason we kill, steal and even wage wars. The final goal is to survive, but most of the things that give us pleasure (drugs, nicotine etc. are artificially human made products) ideally lead us to better survival.
P.S
By the way, this is one of the biggest differences between us and animals. Almost every natural pleasure serves for surviving and unpleasant things are harmful for life. Only Homo Sapiens separated these two: pleasure and survival.
All the junk foods, drug, nicotine, alcohol, “social media trash”, video-games etc. — don’t help, but in some cases make harder to survive, while giving us great pleasure. For animals everything is much more simple: useful things are pleasant, harmful things are unpleasant. Unfortunately, humans intervened into their process also, e.g by producing “junk food” for them…
What about happiness?
It’s really hard to define happiness. Does it equal to pleasure? You might have a great pleasure from chocolate, but not consider yourself happy at the same time. And also, you could be a hungry homeless guy, but feeling happy. Lets leave for every individual to decide what happiness means to him. After all, on the intuition level we all understand what it is.
Happiness is a transitive state. It’s not constant. The harsh reality is like a stark rock, while happiness is ephemeral mist which covers the rock occasionally. It’s said that “anticipation is better than realization”.
In the 21st century it’s very difficult to find the true happiness: the real things that make you happy. Media today decides on behalf of us what makes us happy and we follow their decision thinking that it’s ours. How is it possible, that the majority of people dream about the same (luxury) things? iPhone, Gucci, Lamborghini…
Is it a coincidence? If solving jigsaw puzzles with my girlfriend or playing DOTA 2 makes me happy, why should I search the happiness in yacht? Do I really need it? Does it really make me happy?
Probably, what makes us to dream about them is the image which media creates. Successful person is the one who owns a private jet and yachts, luxury rancho and wide white limousine. We dream about status, identity of “successful” person, not about the things. But in order to get the status the attributes are important.
Lets say, you have a giant diamond ring. It’s enjoyable for you to wear it and walk across the street. But now imagine that government gave to whole nation such a diamond ring (I know, it’s hard to imagine) and everybody on the street wears it. Would it be still as enjoyable to wear it as it used to be when only you exclusively had it?
We don’t need diamond, we need attention, appreciation, status. Homo Sapiens is egoist: all the pleasure from wearing jewelry or brand cloth etc. is actually the pleasure of being “better”, being superior than others. You wish you had a diamond, but at the same time nobody has it. So you could stress your importance.
Technology trap
We live in the age of technology. It is almost in every aspect of our life. First, it seems that it makes our life easier and helps us. And that’s partially true. Of course, technology provides comfort and performs tasks a lot of times better than we — humans. But it’s like a double-edged sword: it brings passiveness.
Never in the history of mankind was man so passive, both mentally and physically. For the average hunter there was no opportunity for being depressed. He needed to protect his family and get the food. Today, we solved all the problems regarding to survival: we have food in the refrigerator, we are safe from predators and harsh climate. There is nothing left for keeping our body and mind busy (we still work, but not so hard as in the past — thanks to technology). That’s why we are more “depressed”. And for the same reason there is a high level of obesity in the world comparing to past (“junk food revolution” is another topic).
We’re becoming more and more passive each year. Not surprising to have so many food-delivery apps, considering the replacement of “pressing the button” with voice commands — just the next step of achieving the utter laziness. Ancient hunter probably was feeling his importance more than us. We’re nothing but a cog in the system…
Modern human does sport for artificially keeping his body in tune, because our body is adjusted for the forest-life, where physical activity was naturally required in order to run away from predators or hunting. Although, we developed everything around us, our brain is not upgraded much, it’s the same as we used to have living in the jungles. But as technology develops, our brain becomes more passive. Inversely.
If our goal is better performance, sure, machines are better. But…
Lets take planting a tree. Write a code, design a hardware and voila: tree-planting machine is ready. It can plant about hundreds of trees in an hour or even faster. There is no place for human to compete and outperform it.
But not always the result is gratifying, so is the process. We’re not only satisfied by the feeling of being fed, but also by the process of eating. The feeling of happiness, of self-importance, of union with nature we experience while planting a tree — can’t be replaced by any technology. We can design machines that feed street animals and no doubt they would do this better than us. But what about that connection between a kitten and you, when he rubs himself against you and purr, meanwhile you’re feeling joy and sense your significance in the life?
Success ≠ Happiness.
I imagine society today as a squirrel running in the wheel. LinkedIn is the ideal forest for that squirrels. Endless amount of cheesy motivational posts are published daily. One of them, which is already a motto of present day is:
Leave the comfort zone. Develop yourself. Be successful!
But what is success? Why to develop oneself always is a “good thing”? Why not to stop to go further at some point and enjoying the moment?
We leave comfort zone to develop ourselves.
We develop ourselves for having more comfort.
And the cycle starts again.
Most of us work for money, there is no another motivation for job, we don’t really feel our contribution, our importance for the things we do. But money is the another drug: when it ends — we feel depressed. When the income is stable, it’s time “to dose up”. Only with “higher dose” we feel happy. (remember the hedonic treadmill). We are just the gears in the machine and anytime can be easily replaced. And no matter, how “successful” we are, we always hungry for more and never satisfied. There is no moment to stop and be happy with the things that you already have.
Imagine, your income is 5K$/month working 8 hours a day. One day, your job policy has been changed and you work only 4 hours per day with the same salary. What would you do? Find part-time job for filling that “free-time-gap” to gain more? But, just before the changes you were happy with your salary. Why should you have more money if there is a possibility for that? Life is not only about money. Why don’t spend what you have and live the life?
Who do you think is more successful? A guy who plays videogames for hours or a guy who at the same age bought the latest model of Mercedes-Benz? Considering the impact of society and media, sure you would think without hesitate that the guy with Mercedes is more successful. Odds are, he doesn’t need a car at all and might be even have no interest in them, but for gaining the recognition of society he is compelled to purchase it. Meanwhile, the thing that truly makes him happy is playing a violin, for example, which he was dreaming about since childhood.
But “it’s not serious” and doesn’t bring money, so why to play it? Watching the favorite TV-show is also waste of time, successful people don’t do that, they work instead.
Sounds familiar, right?
The problem is that success is measured in financial units, rather than “happiness units”.
In my world, anybody who is happy for what he has and does is successful. Success is not the happiness, but happiness is the real success. If the gamer guy is happy with his life, why does he need to “leave the comfort zone”? To develop? For what? Isn’t the ultimate goal is to be happy? He already is. Why to search it anywhere else if it’s next to you?
Any promotion or development demands a lot of commitment, time, energy. And all of this done for being happy at the end. If I’m already content with my current state, why should I “be better”? I’m as I’m and I’m happy with that. What is the reason to change?
I invite everybody to think about happiness.
Are you truly happy? What makes you happy then?
Don’t let media or society decide it for you. Listen to your heart and you’ll find it. You probably don’t need that iPhone, even don’t really love it. You just want to impress somebody. But life is given not for impressing others. Impress yourself!
No need to over-focus on “financial success” either. Money could come and go, but your life is the only one and you never be the same age as you are. Time is not money, time is life, therefore waste money, not time.
Enjoy your life. Be happy! :)
P.S
Don’t forget to read the related article: “Stability Or Happiness?”.
