Happiness Lost
by
Bill Cottringer
What is happiness?
Easier to say what it’s not—
Not frustration, failure, or fiction,
Or suffering, sadness, or sorrow,
Have we hidden happiness,
Just to enjoy finding it more?
Seems harder to find,
Having so many choices,
Of too many interesting experiences,
Which we dismiss too easily,
With negative judgments,
Before we just experience,
The experience.
Maybe less thinking,
And more letting go,
To lose ourselves,
In enjoying experiences,
Leaving our own legacy,
Of Listening, learning, and living?
Or maybe just doing these things
That help us feel that way?
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Here are a few random thoughts I had during my daily gym work out, which I will try to organize in some meaningful way. I seem to get bombarded with a mixture of profound and inane ideas during this time, and I am hoping that these ideas lean towards the profound side. Here are my ideas in order of importance to me:
1. The brain has one fundamental operation—to seek pleasurable rewards and avoid painful punishment. All thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors follow that purpose.
2. Our divided minds file pleasure under the positive/desirable side of life and pain under the negative/undesirable side, but according to our own unique definitions of these qualities.
3. A mental report card of pleasurable vs. painful experiences keeps tabs are results in a happiness/contentment-unhappiness/discontentment report card, according to our definitions and perceptions.
4. A sense of happiness/contentment results from having experiences that interest us, whether they are positive or negative. Unhappiness/discontentment results when we perceive that we are not having enough interesting experiences in our lives.
5. All the interactions from the seeking of these two goals form a feedback loop that represents a vicious circle to either somewhere (positive) or nowhere (negative).
6. A sense of getting somewhere increases happiness/contentment, whereas the sense of going nowhere increases unhappiness/discontent.
7. Getting somewhere reinforces the choices that result in reasonable control over our lives, whereas getting nowhere opens the floodgate of choices that can reduce control of our lives.
8. The ideal life is a 50-50 balance sheet on all this results on the ongoing report card and thermometer, but life interduces many experiences that can upset this balance, depending upon our reactions and interest level assignment.
9. The pursuit of happiness involves having enough interesting and memorable experiences in life to feel that way, by way of our perceptions and judgment in anticipating the experiences.
10. The influential and socially conditioning electronic and virtual worlds we spend most of our time in today have hidden much potential happiness from enjoying common, ordinary, and average experiences, with the prevalence of interest-grabbing, bright and shiny, flash and splash, spectacular special effect experiences, especially magnifying the negative or dark side of life as more glamorous and interesting.
11. The above bus has been driven out of formation from the rest of the flock which is off course, by the collective communication institutions of the regular news media, TV programs, magazines, politicians, different ideological factions of the great divide, the social media, and movies.
12. The problem—the over-interest in spectacular experience for happiness at the expense of enjoying ordinary, average experience—is currently peaking, and the epitome of the problem is the awarding of last year’s Best Picture Academy Award from # 10 above. to the movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
13. Successful communication, at least in the long run, will always involve a healthy mixture of what people want to see, hear, and experience, and what they need to see, hear, and experience.
14. When things get out of balance like they seem to be moving towards today, it is up to the interest influencers to help restore interest balance through all the communication institutions in exposing us to some more potential happiness from ordinary, average experiences we can all have in life.
For example, my partner always resists travel with me because it puts such a responsibility on her to do so many things for so that we can go. But I notice that she rarely ever puts on a frown, just mostly eager to do or see what is up ahead. Occasionally asking why we don't do something simpler rather than reaching out like I always like to do. At the end of our trip, she has fond memories. Telling me she would like to do it again… Without me. ;-)
Ron