Suicide, Creativity, Depression And The Solace Of Solitude

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. ~ Ernest Hemingway

I’ve been reading Infinite Jest for the last few days, and was saddened to find out that the brilliant author of the book (David Foster Wallace) committed suicide.

I’m not surprised though.  For a long time I’ve thought suicide and depression are signs of sensitive intelligent minds.  Many online have also speculated that there’s a correlation between high IQs and suicide, as a higher IQ causes the person deal with complex challenges in life.

From my own experience and observations dealing with mentally ill people: when an individual with a higher IQ possesses acute maladaptive emotional sensitivity,it leads them to depression, neurosis and anxiety.

Suicide And The Self

Animals rarely commit suicide.  So why do we?  Perhaps the cause of our own species suicide is that we are the only creatures aware of our mortality and the responsibility of our survival.

A few hundred years ago, life was different.  It was simpler.  Our sense of ‘individuality’ was way less than it is now.  For instance, if you were born into a carpenter family you had to be a carpenter as well.  That’s how it worked.

There wasn’t a decision involved on our part, instead, we were part of groups (families, casts etc.) and had jobs and statuses in society.  Marriages were more for convenience than for love, Kings only married into their own blood and if you were born a peasant you could never have the aspiration to be a King, like you can now to become a President.  Back then, our stories were already written.  All we had to do was act them out.

But slowly, as our society has evolved, and we’ve been given the responsibility for our destinies and futures, we are told that we can become anything we want if we try hard enough.  Thus, our lives have become much more troublesome.  Freedom can become a burden.

Freedom of choice places the whole blame and regret of failure on the shoulders of the individual.  In the old Indian cast system, for example, suicides were almost non-existent.  An untouchable never aspired to become a Brahman, rather, he accepted his cast, and his main concern was to find food and shelter.  There was no time to worry about depression and suicide.

These days, intelligent people can truly see the magnitude of the scope of possibilities available to them, more than the rest of people around them.  This causes them to see through many of the fallacies of society and the meaninglessness of the routine existences and pursuits we all value so dearly.

The Self and Others

When I write of the ‘self’ I refer to our ego, our sense of identity and separateness from everyone else.

With Western ‘Individuation’, we have the gift and curse of ambitions, the pressure of comparing ourselves against each other, and the tension of considering how much we’ve progressed towards our goals of success.  Not only that, but with “individuality” comes a stronger sense of who we are, a personality.  You can’t be conscious of yourself as a separate individual unless you have another person to compare yourself with.

With this sense of self or ‘identity’ comes a sense of self-worth,  which is easily malleable, especially during childhood.  Any traumatic experience in our formation years can lead to a maladaptive emotional sensitivity.  Children who are highly intelligent when they are young are of often rejected and excluded by other children.  Because they are so different and odd, they become social outsiders.  Intellectually they are superior but socially they are underdeveloped.

Therefore, as we can see, your social development influences your emotional development which is responsible for your ability to cope with risky or stressful situations.  Your emotional development is also influenced by your relationship with your parents as you grew up.  Bad experiences or poor relationships lead to greater mistrust and unhappiness in life, and eventually even suicide.  Examples of this can be found throughout history.

Hemingway is the perfect example of this, with an unknown number of failed romantic relationships (including four different wives) to fill the void of his unhappiness, that eventually lead to his suicide.  John Donne, William Collins, Samuel Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Louis Macneice are all writers who suffered parental turmoil and trauma during their childhood that lead to severe recurrent depression as adults.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Theodore Roethke, William Cowper, Randall Jarrell, James Russell Lowell, Delmore Schwartz were also poets that suffered from recurrent depression, many like Cowper also committed suicide.  Christohpher Smart, John Clareand Robert Lowell were frequently admitted into psychiatric wards.  Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton and Hart Crane all committed suicide.

Franz Kafka was avoidant in personality and afraid of attachment considering himself to be ‘…disgracefully skinny and weak.’  Edward Lear was separated from his parents and suffered a life long depression as a lonely homosexual adult.  Rudyard Kipling was also deprived early on from his parents, leading to neurotic behaviour.

Michelangelo also suffered from periods of depression, writing three hundred poems – many about his mother who died when he was 6 years old.

The Solace of Solitude

Our ‘self’ or ego is not a thing, rather, it is a tension we carry inside.  Our identities can only exist as a friction with other people’s identities.

A man in solitude, complete solitude, is a man with no identity.  Solitude allows a man to be free from other people, neurotic involvements, historical hangovers from childhood, obligations, duties, emotional demands, fears and hopes.  The solitary man also has the freedom to develop intense concentration for the abstract art of creativity.

Isn’t it true that we often feel most ourselves when we are alone?  The depressive artist thinks this to be truer, they feel that their innermost being finds its completion.  Spurred by depression, these imaginative people create fantasy worlds, to compensate for what was missing and find a sense of worth in their lives, to fill that void they feel inside.

With solitude and intense concentration of creation comes the loss of past and future, all that exists is the present moment.  This is the appeal to the depressed intelligent person, to totally immerse themselves with fascination in the present, an escape from all unhappiness and problems, an opportunity to become timeless, selfless, lost in the present of almost non-existence.

Psychiatrist Abraham Maslow put it this way:

We become much more free of other people, which in turn, means that we become much more ourselves, our real selves, our authentic selves, our real identity.

Love gives us glimpses of this feeling, melting the ego boundaries away.  It makes us feel that the lover and the beloved should be one, as so often spoken of in poetry.

The depressed artist grows and exists through their creations.  Their work and style is constantly changing because they are never satisfied with what they have done. Once one project is finished, another must be started, otherwise the depression renews itself unless they are totally immersed in an act of creation.

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility and worry to equanimity, receptivity and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shifts of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analysed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. ~William James

I’m Nobody, Who Are You?

“I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”

~ Emily Dickinson

I first gained interest in Emily Dickinson after reading the above poem. It resonated with me, laden with truth, somebody as well knew my secret, that we were nobodies. She openly admits her outsider status seeming happy with it, she even see’s how ‘dreary‘ it would be to be a somebody.

I knew then that I was not alone in my discovery.  But in knowing so, I risked the possibility of becoming a ‘somebody’ and be ‘banished‘ from my nobodiness, as she alludes to at the end of the first stanza after meeting another nobody.

The Source of Self Esteem

For as long as I can remember, I could clearly see two large forces move within me when it came to motivating me to act in life. My ego or my pride. They are sometimes mistakenly used synonymously, but from a young age I liked redefining words in order to have some sort of way to express myself more concretely. My understanding of these words is:

Pride /prīd/: Finding self-worth and respect in yourself based on your achievements and your self-growth in comparison to your former self.
Ego /ēgō/: Finding self-worth and respect in yourself based on the opinion, respect and comparisons others make of you.

I believe this is the general understanding that – at least intuitively – we all have of these words.

Ego and Self Esteem

“We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Our minds are so accustomed to gaining self-esteem from others that we find this perfectly normal. Even though this is normal, it isn’t necessarily healthy. Gaining our self esteem from others becomes an addiction, we constantly need doses of ego-boost to feel special.  Look through the following examples, and try to see whether you can relate to any.  Many of these are unhealthy and ingrained habits we tend to have:

• Checking our email ten times a day.  This becomes a habit in order to know that we exist as ‘somebodies’ in the eyes of others.  Also, many of us compulsively scan our Facebook pages in hope that someone may have Liked one of our photos, our latest relationship status or some witty comment we left somewhere. Twitter as well is the result of an egocentric culture.  It revolves around the notion that we’re so special in the eyes of others that even ‘going to take a pee‘ is worthy of praise and sharing to anyone who will read.
• Youtube, Reddit or any other community-type websites with open comment systems are similarly addictive.  They’re addictive to those seeking an ego-boost dose from arguing.  Just look up any religious or anti-religious Youtube video and read the same repetitive cycles of arguments that go back and forth between people.  The end result is that these people feel the tingly goodness of being right and being ‘somebodies‘ by proving how wrong someone else is.
• Conversations are the perfect opportunities to become a ‘somebody‘.  The topic of cars, for instance, might bring up the chance to feel that ego-boost by mentioning how marvelous your car is.  Or you may mention the quantity of girls you’ve been involved with, or an expensive and fancy trip you’re planning in Asia.  We feel elated when we encounter someone who’s unaware of a piece of information we posses – some kind of celebrity gossip, some piece of worldly news or historic trivia – we become the knowers, the informers, the bearers of light to their darkness.  None of this has any real value except that scrap of gratification you receive in the act, of not just being an ordinary ‘nobody‘ but a ‘somebody‘ that has tasted the finer things in life.
• Sports: the eternal dichotomy.  People identify themselves and their ego’s with a team they’ve either inherited by birth from their family or country, or picked based on their environment and what others liked. Each supporter cheers for their team because with that teams outcome also rides as a bet an ego-boost dosage (to be part of the ‘somebodies‘ who won).  However, in this case there’s also the chance to have some dosage of self-worth removed from your system in the event of a loss in the match. In the best case scenario, 50% of the stadium will leave in mirth and joy at the cost of the other 50%’s suffering and dejection.

These are just some of the subtle ways we try to find our self esteem and self worth through our ‘somebodies‘ ego. And it starts forming very early on in our life.  You must have seen young children shouting “look mum!Look at me!” trying to gain their parents attention when their parents are preoccupied talking to someone or doing something else.

So consider this…Who exactly are you in this life?   Your name?  Prestige? Religion? Country? Respectability? Money? Power? Scholarship?  This whole accumulation becomes your identity, your ‘somebody’, and it gives you a false sense of being.  This is the ego. All these things are ephemeral, they are relative, one day the crowd finds value in what you have to offer, and the next day they’ll get sick of you. If you find your self worth from being intelligent, funny or pretty what  happens if you’re put into a room with the funniest, prettiest or most intelligent people in the world? your ego identity is completely shattered. Just look at many child film stars or music boy bands. Is it very wise to find your own self worth from something that is so relative and fluctuates so much?

If you are a ‘nobody‘ you don’t know who you are and it’s frightening – for this you have to have a lot of courage. Ego’s allow you to become a ‘somebody‘.  When you become a nobody the question of “If I dont know who I am, then what am I doing here?” is replied with “whatever I’m doing here becomes meaningless“.  The reaction then is to find out who you are by identifying yourself with as much as possible.  You make yourself as known to others and as special as possible, because if others know who you are, then you’ll feel that you know who you are as well.  This is basically what egotism is. Ever wondered why there are wars, business monopolies, social corruption, human abuse and exploitation?  A ‘nobody‘ out there is trying to become a ‘somebody‘.

There’s a parable of Napoleon which I don’t know whether true or not.  Napoleon was having trouble reaching for his hat someone had put on top of a shelf. One of his guards offered his assistance: “Let me help you Sir since I’m bigger than you”, Napoleon smiling answered “My young boy, you may be taller than me but you’ll never be bigger“.

Egotism is a business deal, a transaction. You exchange your freedom to be yourself to gain others respect.

Follow us on twitter!

Pride and Self Love

Ego is a by-product of others opinions. These opinions are given to you – but something that is dependent on others can also be taken away from you. Pride is a totally different phenomenon. It doesn’t require others validation, you become enough unto yourself, you have the unique individual dignity you were born with – your pride comes from inside your world.  Pride has nothing to do with competing like ego does.  Ego’s force you to compete over outside things in the world that others value, e.g. who has the most money.  You can’t compete with Pride however – that would be like comparing who’s the best at being Matthew M___? or Arthur Smith? There’s only one person, one individual unreliant on others.  The only thing you can do is compete with yourself, taking pride, and feeling dignity and respect with how much you’ve grown spiritually, physically, emotionally or mentally from your past former self.

Many people including religious collectives condemn self love as if it were the same asegotism.  Their reasoning seems to make sense on the surface: “If you love yourself you will become an egotist, a narcissist“.  This is not true however. A person who loves themselves wants to become the best they can be, they want to explore themselves and in doing so they find out how harmful gaining their self worth from their ego can be.  If you truly love yourself you want to take care of yourself.  It’s only self-hating people that harm themselves physically or mentally.

The parable of Narcissus says that he had fallen in love with his reflection after looking into a pool of water. A person who loves themselves does not fall in love with their reflection – this is an egotist, or one who finds their self worth in how other people see them.  In Narcissus’ case, he fell in love with others reflection and opinion of him – this was the metaphor of the parable. A person who loves themselves simply loves themselves. No mirrors, opinions or reflections are needed; they know themselves from within. So the question is: do you need a mirror, or other people, to prove that you exist? If there were no mirrors or people in this world, would you become suspicious of your existence and how much you’re worth as a person?

An Involutionary Nobody

When Emily Dickinson refers to being “banished“, she is saying that we are all ‘nobodies‘ when we internally evolve and find our self worth from our pride. “Don’t tell! / They’d banish us, you know“.   When she meets another ‘nobody‘, she falls into the risk of becoming a ‘somebody‘ because now this other nobody can ‘tell’ others about her, forming an opinion of her, feeding her ego.  In meeting the other nobody, she will be ‘banished’ from her nobody land and join the rest of the worlds somebodies.

In the second stanza she goes on to say “How dreary to be somebody!”  In being anobody she doesn’t have to pretend to care for ego-boosting conversations, the putting on of social masks, or pretending to be who she isn’t, to gain others temporary respect and admiration. Being a nobody is very freeing. “How public, like a frog / To tell your name the livelong day / To an admiring bog!” It’s an excellent simile to compare our constant need for attention to that of this amphibian.  If you’ve ever been to a bog, you’ll hear frogs croaking without any respite.  The only admiration they get for all that work is from the bog; a soft wet ground that when you venture to walk on, you get covered in dirty mud.

Why The Fear Of Uncertainty May Be Ruining Your Life

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  ~ Robert Frost

I want to share with you something, something wild, dangerous and ultimately liberating:

Uncertainty is always the best.

I realize the chaotic and possible anarchic implications of that statement.  But the older I get, the more I observe, the more I introspect, and the more I reason, the more I realize that the path less traveled is often the wisest path to take.

You may be wondering what I mean by this “path less traveled” business.  To put it simply, think of the typical paths taken or decisions made by the people in society - and do the opposite.

Think of the typical person – their life goes something like this: go to school, graduate, get a job, meet a lover, get married, have children, raise children, retire, die.  Of course, there are little details in between, but most people stick to this textbook style of living.

Not many people stop to think about the paths they take.  Thinking outside of the box is largely extinct.

And anyone who deviates from the predetermined path that most people have invested so much energy in, is ostracized, stigmatized or thought of as eccentric, wayward or sinful.

Think, how it would feel to remain unmarried for your entire life, just because your relationship is enough, for itself by itself.  Just because it doesn’t need to be sanctioned or legitimized or publicly recognized by anyone.  Just because the relationship itself is sufficient a reward, instead of the artificial, fearful protection that an “I do” provides.

Think, how it would feel to do what you want to do, instead of what your parents pressure you to do.  To work in a job you want to work in, and not what society dictates is “respectable” or not.

Think, how it would feel to drop out of university just because you don’t want to be there.  Just because it’s a ridiculous expectation to study for multiple years, racking up a lifetime of debt in a job that you have no way of knowing you’ll stick with for the rest of your life.

Think, how it would feel to turn right instead of left, to lead instead of follow, to follow a path alien and intriguing to you.

Think about living with no fake guarantees, throwing away all comfortable boundaries and taking risks with no promises of success.

Think about going without permission, doing without planning and dreaming without approval.

Think about experimenting, trying something new, becoming vulnerable, taking the road less traveled by.

How does it feel?  Scary.  That’s how it feels.

And that’s why people prefer to live miserable and boring lives – because they’re certain and predictable.  Not unpredictable and scary.

3 Ways Embracing The Fear Of Uncertainty Can Fulfill Your Life

If there’s anything you get out of this article, I hope it’s that you realize how liberating gambling with uncertainty can be every once in a while.  You don’t need to become a crazy daredevil to embrace uncertainty, you just need to feel the fear, but venture into the unknown anyway.  And this is why:

1#  Courageousness

Courageousness is the opposite of the anxiety that fearing uncertainty brings.

I’ve felt plenty of anxiety in my life because of my inability to embrace uncertainty.  I’m sure you have as well.  But when we choose to look past our anxiety, not letting it engulf our entire world, we can simply feel anxious, but continue venturing into the unknown anyway.

Courage is a quality of the spirit that is not necessarily embedded in us since birth.  Personally, I’ve found that courage is a quality that needs to be cultivated – and the only way to do that is by embracing uncertainty!  I’ve found that a good way to cultivate courage is to focus on the goal, instead of the feeling (of fear).

Emotions cripple you, thoughts ground you.

2# Serenity

People who fear uncertainty generally have many neurotic tendencies.  When you think of a neurotic person, what do you picture?  I personally see a fearful, obsessive and mentally perturbed person – and there are many of those people in my life.

Neuroticism can be seen as a maladjusted way of dealing with anxiety, and all anxiety springs from fear of the unknown.  Obsessive compulsive disorders, religious fanaticism and controlling behaviors are amongst many symptoms of the neurotic person who fears uncertainty.

And I can’t deny that there isn’t any neuroticism inside of me either, in fact, I believe that most people are neurotic in some form or another.  It’s a symptom of living in our society.  However, once you accept that life is unpredictable, uncertain and can’t be figured out or controlled, life suddenly becomes very serene.  It’s as though a dark veil lifts from your eyes because you see that the uncertainty of life can be quite beautiful and mysterious.

Anyway, if you could predict every day for the rest of your life, what would be the point in living?  Your life would become boring and dead, cloaked in predictability.

3# Personal Growth   

The most tragic phenomenon to observe in life is the person who has stopped growing.

This person has stopped taking risks, has stopped dreaming and has stopped becoming vulnerable.  Essentially, this person has become stagnant as they prefer to live a life of routinary comfort instead of spontaneous risk taking.

In order to continuously grow and strengthen, like a tree, we need to let go of the need to know and the need to be right.  As human being, we feel the need to “figure life all out” and to have our lives “all figured out”.  We hold, cling and grasp onto anything that will take away uncertainty.  Why?  Because we fear it.  The more we control and the more we abandon the freedom to grow and learn, the more we become stagnant.

Just look at Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So down the road, or you-know-who in your family or friend circle who always live by the same routine, day in, day out.  It’s as though their lives are in a perpetual freeze, an eternal frozen animation where everything is safe, and controlled.

Peace lies in letting go of the need to know.  Personal growth lies in letting go of the need to control.

The Virtues of Solitude – #9 Self Fulfillment

Life may have no meaning.  Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.  ~  Ashleigh Brilliant

It took me a while to figure out that the future held no self fulfillment for me.

It was a bit hard to come to that conclusion while I was immersed in the noisy banter of beliefs and ideas that my friends, family and religion clung to. Perhaps you’ve experienced this as well?  Perhaps you’ve noticed that everyone seems to think that true self fulfillment lies in some idealistic future, where everything is as perfect and spotless as God’s lavatory.  

“Don’t worry honey, you’ll be able to relax once you finish university”, “Everything will be fine once you get a pay rise and manage to sell all your paintings and then fly to Las Vegas for the premier, in 5 star luxury”, “You’ll be happy once you get her to love you”, “It will all be alright once you manage to earn brownie points, save a few souls, and make it to heaven unscathed”.

In essence, the people around us and the people we even trust the most, live an illusion and spread the lie that satisfaction, achievement and happiness is waiting in some place beyond the horizon.  While striving for the future brings our lives meaning, it’s a sickly kind of meaning ridden with anxiety, tension and dissatisfaction.  If you’re a perfectionist, the pursuit of self fulfillment is probably making your life hell at the moment, like it did with mine.

So, why can’t we find self fulfillment right now?  We’ll get to that soon.  But first …

Everyone’s a Peeping Tom

You can think of it this way: in the scheme of things everyone’s basically a peeping Tom.  The people around us have a knack, and sometimes immense interest looking in on our lives, and then telling us how they think we should run them.  This is especially the case if you’re surrounded by rigid people who believe there’s a “right way” to do everything, including how to attain self fulfillment.

How many times have you listened to and watched the people around you say through their words and deeds that to be self fulfilled you must have everything bigger and better than everyone else around you?  People bored and unhappy with their lives tend to have the amusing habit of telling other people what they should do with their lives.  This is why the ability to find privacy away from life’s busybodies is essential.

How can we think independently to discover who we are and what we want when we’re constantly bombarded with other people’s mental and verbal diarrhea?  Personally, I moved away from my parents and left their religion to stop the noisy interference to find my own path.

If you’re deeply dissatisfied with your life, as I was, perhaps you need to find some Solitude?  Only in Solitude can we find the time to cultivate the awareness and introspection we need to discover what will make us happy and what will bring us self fulfillment.

Follow us on twitter!

What a Crazy Man Said     

He who has a why to live, can deal with almost any how.  ~  Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche … many people hated him and if you’re religious, you may be highly biased against him as well.  But if you try to look past that and read the statement above, you’ll see that his words carry some truth.  Without meaning, without a “why” our lives are virtually useless and purposeless.

If you look at the main cause of depression and suicide in society, the overriding cause is a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.  What’s the point of living if there’s no point anymore?  This is why the self fulfillment that comes in Solitude is so important.

Solitude allows us to truly discover what will fulfill us, and self fulfillment provides us with the meaning to continue living our lives with happiness.  Take the story of Viktor Frankl, a Nazi concentration camp survivor and psychotherapist.  Although he lived in abysmal circumstances where he was treated little better than a dog day after day, he never lost hope.

His fulfillment came in delighting in the small morsels of beauty there were, rewriting scraps of a manuscript that had perished, and living the whole ordeal as a learning experience, to tell his students in the future.  Unsurprisingly, he called his book “Man’s Search For Meaning“.

Self Fulfillment is a Hindu

We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life daily and hourly.  ~ Viktor Frankl

Self fulfillment and meaning are inextricably linked.  As we have seen, to be fulfilled we need some kind of meaning.  Whether that be personal, interpersonal, or religious is up to you.  But as Sol said in his previous article on Happiness, true happiness is eternally reborn.  True happiness is adapting to each present moment in complete acceptance, without any expectations or ideals.

Happiness comes with momentary appreciation and acceptance, but also comes from meaning as well.  If happiness can be constantly regenerated each moment, so can self fulfillment.  People seem to think that life should be about one all-or-nothing purpose that brings happiness.  But why can’t we feel a sense of achievement, satisfaction and happiness every day?

Just a few minutes ago I felt great satisfaction and accomplishment savoring and eating a whole banana.  I’m currently feeling self fulfilled writing this article and typing every word.  In a few hours time, I will feel fulfilled reading the book I’ve chosen to learn from.  You see, we can make a million little meanings every day.

Why does self fulfillment have to involve “one big grandiose plan”?  As Viktor Frankl said “the meaning of life differs from man to man and from moment to moment“.  By making many different meanings everyday, we will constantly feel fulfilled.

And finally, by exploring ourselves in Solitude, we will know where to look and start in the first place.

The Virtues of Solitude – #8 Happiness

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ~ John Lennon

Our lives are driven by incentives and happiness is the greatest of them all.  Happiness fuels our actions, and at the same time is the most elusive, and seemingly hardest to achieve virtue.  Just think of the eternal “pursuit of happiness” people talk about all the time.  When it comes to happiness, nothing fails like success.  There never comes a moment when you can proclaim to have attained happiness.  Why?  Because happiness is eternally reborn.

The American constitution states that the pursuit of happiness is a mans birthright.  Some of us are too frightened to “pursue happiness”, finding a certain comfort in misery.  Other’s of us are cynical of the “pursuit of happiness”, so that every time we yell at people to “Act your age!”, it sounds like “Be sad with me!”

So what exactly is Happiness?  And how does Solitude cooperate in feeling it?

Happiness Is Not A Pursuit

One of the easiest mental traps to fall into is the idea that happiness is “just out there” waiting to nip us on the butts.  People seem to think that happiness is waiting for us, beyond some kind of future achievement of a goal, or a change of circumstances.  But this mindset only makes our happiness dependent on factors outside of our control.

A good example of this false idea is summarized in a well known saying: happiness is having someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.  This common belief has some truth to it, but when you think about it, reaching and keeping these ideal circumstances creates a lot of anxiety that leads to unhappiness.  It’s self defeating!  Your beloved may die, your age eventually will hinder your activities and your expectations of the future may not be met.

The pursuit of happiness is a self-perpetuating task.  Pursuing anything creates a tension, the tension makes you unhappy, and unhappiness will demand to continue the eternal, exhausting pursuit.

Follow us on twitter!

Happiness Is Not Gratification

There is no greater happiness than making teenagers feel uncomfortable by hovering near them in the condom aisle. Or so I thought.

Too often happiness is confused with gratification. Gratification is the awesome feeling that comes when we accomplish a goal we set out to achieve.  Basically gratification is getting what you wanted.

Gratification isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just not going to get you any closer to happiness.  Why?  By achieving one desire and getting something you wanted will 99.9% of the time result in another new desire arising, and demanding to be achieved.

You may be thinking “but we need desires because without them we’d have no incentive to act. We wouldn’t be able to live. Right?”  Desires aren’t directly the cause of unhappiness, but it’s an attachment to these desires that makes us unhappy. This is where acceptance becomes a virtue.

What we want shouldn’t be responsible for determining how happy we are, it is how happy we are that should determine what it is that we want.

Happiness In Solitude

“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” ~ Blaise Pascal

Although the world has changed hugely over the centuries, the basic ingredients of human happiness still remain the same.   The Sufi’s believe that everybody is born happy, it is our innate nature, and only through our socialization do we get lost in the mental fallacies of suffering.  What we call happiness is simply just what the absence of suffering feels like.  

“Dukkha” is a Buddhist word that describes the absence of the suffering.  This isn’t the suffering that comes with a major catastrophic event in our lives like the death of a loved one, but is rather a word that describes the persistent, almost subtle feelings of dissatisfaction and desires that most of us feel during our daily lives.

As spoken about in the previous article in this series, desire is the root of all our suffering.  For instance, think about the well known desire not to look ridiculous at your next job interview.  This results in worry, unease, insecurity with how you look/speak/behave, uncertainty and symptoms of panic and anxiety.

So, why do we pursue happiness?  Basically, because we are dissatisfied, and we feel as though there’s something missing in our lives, or something that we must add to make our lives ‘richer’.  Financial security, possessions, seeking our peers respect and approval, status and entitlement are all symptoms of the pursuit of happiness.  They are all the result of dissatisfaction.

Only through introspection do we finally come to realize that happiness is not something we want to gain, but happiness is something we want to lose: insecurities, hunger, fears and angst. 

In solitude we have the freedom through introspection to find all that has been causing our suffering and destroy it.

We are bombarded from a young age with countless social ideals that we ‘should’ strive to accomplish.  We are told that we should achieve good grades, a respectable career, be righteously moral, achieve a successful lifestyle with the latest gadgets for our families.  We are told that males should be sexually accomplished and females sexually modest, everyone should be socially extroverted, physically attractive, and well versed in political, historical and social matters.  And all this, towards being financially secure in our retirement, and able to provide ‘properly and sufficiently’ for our children’s futures.

Only in solitude can we feel respite from the social idealistic baits that initiate our aimless happiness pursuits. Only in solitude can we rid ourselves from the judgement of others in order to find our true selves and overcome all the feelings that cause our suffering, living our lives with our own natural happiness.

Unhappiness, in essence, is the result of how poorly you’re relating to the present moment and its circumstances.  So think for a moment … are you practicing acceptance?  Are you experiencing thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation for all that life offers in this moment, now?  Happiness is the side-effect of an acceptance of the present moment, without the preoccupation of wanting the moment to be more ideal, or expecting it to be different in some way.

Solitude presents the opportunity to learn how to adapt and relate to each present moment, in order to produce complete acceptance and complete happiness.