How to Find Happiness

March, 04

Things are just fine, we say.

We like to keep things the same.
We like security.
We like the familiar, routines.
We like an easy life.
We like our ways.
We like to stay with what we know.
We like people who are like us.We don’t like new things.
We don’t like big changes.
We don’t like adversity.
We don’t like obstacles.
We don’t like pain.
We don’t like upheavals.
We certainly don’t like our enemies.

Or do we?

Can we switch our likes and dislikes?
We all like happiness.
But we don’t agree on what makes us happy,
or how much something makes us happy.

Everyone pays attention to happiness. Even scientists who are supposed to be dispassionate, are churning out studies. They assigned numerical values to happiness and let people rate how much something would make them happy:
Before they got it,
When they get it,
And after some time.

They found three outcomes on happiness.

Everything material, people tend to rate them high while expecting. When they get it, the rating is almost never as high. And the value depreciates in time.

When people rate the time they spend with loved ones, the outcome is just as high if not higher than they expected. As time goes on, people recall these memories and the happiness value goes higher and higher. In another word, the value appreciates, or high ROI—return on investment.

So how do we spend time with our loved ones?
Some of the deepest pains are also caused by some of our closest family and friends.
How can we continue to find happiness, grow in happiness
when we argue, we get mad, irritable, disappointment, sad, hopeless, fearful…
with our closest loved ones?

One way of modern thinking must be changed—
the way we think pain is bad.
We avoid, we suppress, we do everything we can
to not have pain, not even discomfort.
We bandage, we drug, we numb our pain and discomfort
instead of finding out what causes the pain.
We stay right on top of pain and darkness in ourselves,
sometimes all the way until death.
We become more and more rigid
from deeper and deeper layers of fear of pain.

3. The third outcome the psychologist learned from their research is that whenever people expect something to be really bad, when it happens, it’s never as bad as people thought, even when it is the death of a loved one. We always get over the pain sooner than we could image. Almost without fail, happiness returns sooner than we expect.

If we are not forced to look at pain and always run away,
more and more fear and rigidity builds in our psyche and our body.
Emotional and psychological pain becomes physical.
When we suppress physical pain, it doesn’t really go away.
It continues to build, cause bigger and deeper pain and more severe illness
in our body.

How to get out of this endless vicious cycle?

Reverse the spiral—
Choose to look at the pain.
Look right into the pain, physically and emotionally.
Know that we are strong and resilient,
that we will survive the worst healing crisis.
Know that the pain is never greater than who we are.
When you trust yourself, and let go, release,
you go through the pain.

Then we are a layer lighter. Brighter.
We feel our strength as ever-flowing water, not as aging concrete.
We become truer.
We can be with our loved ones closer.
Our enemy can become our friend.
This is when
Happiness can build,
Endlessly.