pursuit of happiness

[confessionalart]

It seems to me that there are two main paths in the pursuit of happiness, albeit with complicated overlapping. The first being a pursuit of situations that cause you to feel happy. The other being a pursuit of finding happiness with your current situation. I’ve long considered myself to be entrenched in the latter, to varying degrees. I

Comments

[wise_man]

Something else I've found in the past few years or so, is that another key portion to becoming happier is finding things in your life that make you unhappy, and reducing or excising them. Sometimes this action can be very painful, but I've found myself, my life, my health, and my sanity to all be better off because of it (I did everything in my power to avoid a surgery analogy....I hope it worked.)

[confessionalart]

Yes, quite true. At this point, I think I've managed to cut out the bulk of the things that drag me down. I think I would lump that in with pursuit of situations that make me happy (situation possibly = the lack of something). Often, in getting past the negative junk, I found that cutting it out meant losing some of the good things in my life that regrettably come along with some bad. After all, if there weren't any good elements, it is unlikely that I would have gotten into it in the first place. (i.e. sticking with WW LARPs, remaining a die-hard Bears fan in 2004, our choice to stay in DC, and my Rocky Martin CD collection.) For that reason, I sometimes end up deciding to suck it up and persevere. Other times, I discover pretty obvious dead weight to be cast off. It is a point well taken that periodical examination of potential dead weight is good, even if feeling happy overall.

[seldomawake]

I'm going to quote Calvin (of the 8-year-old variety, not the other guy) here:

"That's a lot more mature than I care to be."

It's pretty smart.

But there's something to be said about the hunger and the hunt of the former approach.

Really, you know you're alive when you...

...do something really dumb that can jeopardize the happiness associated with the latter approach so that the former can be satisfied. There really is something to be said for the hunger you feel when you eat the dust of an Aston Martin, and resolve to be the guy in the Aston, the next time.

I'm not saying it's healthy. I'm saying it's dumb. :)

[forbiddenkisss]

I heart Calvin and Hobbes. Plenty of wisdom there.

[confessionalart]

I really can't argue with the wisdom of Calvin. :-)

It does bring up a point about where I feel I am with spontaneous or potentially dangerous acts/choices. I'm not nearly as outlandish as I was before being married with children and a million miles away from the insanity of my early-mid twenties. I don't at all feel that my bachelor, youthful ways were wrong or immature, per se (except for 1994). Rather, I haven't yet figured out how to be comfortable with tremendous risk when every choice I make affects 4 people. For me, part of my happiness with where I am is accepting that I can't easily be so careless; however, I've not lost sight of my pursuit of discovering how close to reckless I can get without injuring my family. :-) I'm still working on it.

[seldomawake]

You got me: I can't even begin to fathom that kind of responsibility that entails. Sounds terrifying. I just hurt the sidewall on one of my tires, and I'm freakin'. I can't imagine that kids a) have sidewalls and b) can be repaired easily. I bow to your greater sense of adultness :)

[dempcat]

My dad told me about something he'd read a few years ago, regarding happiness.

Happiness has the same linguistic root as happenstance and perhaps and haphazard. Happy still retains some of this sense of fortune and luck - as in a happy coincidence.

All this hap-ness comes from a time when no one had the luxury of looking for happiness. If happiness came to you, you were lucky. If it didn't, you weren't unlike anyone else who just went through their day surviving.

I don't have any specific point in telling you this - I just found it such an interesting reversal of perspective.

[confessionalart]

It is an interesting point. I think we all certainly have reason to be thankful for the opportunities of hope, peace and happiness that our predecessors likely never dreamed would come.