Sometimes I wonder if their is no such thing as happiness. Maybe happiness is something that exists for most people in the world, but as I get closer and closer to being "old," I'm starting to think that the only feelings I am able to feel are simply raw passions. I understand hurt, because I know how it feels to be hurt...all I have to do is think about one simple thing and I instantly understand hurt. I know sadness too, because when I think about sad things, I instantly feel sad. When I think about things that would normally constitute as something that should make me feel happy...I feel nothing.
Happiness is a short term emotion, it's something you strive for and work to maintain. If someone were to give me $100 I would not feel happy about it; The instant emotion that comes from positive aspects of life isn't happiness - they are simply joy or excitement. Happiness is a condition more than emotion, it's more like a state of being. When I was a kid and my parents got me every last gift I wanted, I wasn't happy, I was joyfull and full of Christmas cheer, but these things didn't make me happy. The older I get the more I start to think that happiness isn't something you can feel at all, it's more just inflated contentness.
My problem is that if I can't define something, I can't believe in it. The reason I wonder if happiness is real is the same reason I don't believe in God, Satan, or the 2009 Atlanta Falcons, and that is all because I have no proof that any of these things are real (and in the case of the Atlanta Falcons, I have no proof their Defensive Line exists, and, after all, offense wins games, but defence wins titles). I understand love, and I know the feeling I get when I think about the girl laying next to me is love, and I enjoy LITERALLY every secon we spend together, I'm not sure if having this in my life is happiness. Listen, I am not saying that I'm not happy, I am saying that I don't think happiness, the emotional idea of being happy for a long amount of time even exists at all.
I think I provoke myself into feeling upset about things simply because it's a raw, visceral emotional experience. I like to stay upset about things because then I am actually feeling something, and can usually quantify that experience (usually by how hard I punch my steering wheel or how many Park songs I may be listening to). But happiness just feels like nothing. Happiness doesn't make me feel good, but it doesn't bring me down; it doesn't give me hope but it doesn't make me want to strangle myself with my belt either. Happiness is just there and it's existence in my life is often pretty questionable.
Just like the 2009 Atlanta Falcons
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2 comments:
I will resist the urge to call you Charlie Brown...
I totally get what you're saying here. Not saying it's right, but I get why you'd kind of trick yourself into feeling crappy because you can actually pinpoint that feeling.
I'd like to say that I'm a pretty happy person, or that I have been in the past, but lately I've been pretty negative (hey, we can be Charlie Brown twins), and it's so much easier for me to focus on all the SHIT and not on trying to overcome it.
I don't have an answer, but I can at least relate.
Yeah. It's complex. I don't remember when I was happy. I was relaxed or comfortable, but not happy. I think I would be happy if I got seriously sick and suddenly recovered after a long period of sickness. We don't appreciate our health / wealth and other till we loose it.
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