Emotions and Happiness

I don't know if I believe this or not, but it is well-put and quite pause-worthy.

"One reason, I think a lot of good ideas go unspoken is because they don't always have an immediate impact or they're assumed as common knowledge. A lot of good information has slipped into obsecurity over the years because of this.

I think another possible reason is that the foundation for almost all marketing is to make us think, at some level, that what we're feeling about things right now isn't okay, and some product will make our lives better. They keep us off balance so we'll buy. This is advertising 101.

Since we're bombarded with messages like this, people get conditioned to think that's what life really is. To work at feeling good and to do whatever it takes to improve the shitty parts of their lives so they can, again, feel good. There's some truth in that, since we experience pain and pleasure for a reason, and they are useful emotions, but they're also very basic emotions. The net effect of these constant messages, I think, is that we become reduced to creatures who are basically just looking for the next high.

But we didn't always think that way. I don't think we did, anyhow. I don't know, actually, I just know that we can think beyond just pain or pleasure.

In any case, the fact is, encouraging deep personal satisfaction hurts the bottom line or, at the very least, it doesn't sell. And since most of the ideas we live by are filtered through a screen of marketers or have been filtered through that screen long ago, we just don't see ideas that don't sell as often. Its just not common knowledge anymore.

I mean, think about the people you know. The vast majority of them don't think critically enough about information to be able to pick out good ideas and discard bad ones. Lots of people were basically raised by the media, or at least they picked up their mores from the media somehow or another.

Mass marketing, in other words. Ideas that sell. They were raised by parents who were bombarded by mass marketed messages, too. It was more basic back then, but it was still an important influence. So, ideas, even important ones that came through their parents were influenced, to some extent, by manufactured messages that sell.

That's why there are a shitload of poor people voting for Romney. Its why people are chucking phones they bought a year ago to go buy the newest one. Its why the divorce rate is through the roof and rising. The messages people hear are intended to make them chase emotional highs. To sell. When the high wears off, its time to buy something new. Or buy into something new. You've got people who, their entire lives, have only heard that stuff or things or these really popular ideas or this or that will make them happy, will change their lives from the outside in. When they buy into products, they experience a thrill and momentary satisfaction that reinforces the belief that x = happiness, but it fades when its newness wears off, but since whatever it is made them feel good, and happiness is feeling good, all we need to do is got get more happiness. The products don't always have to cost money, either. Money isn't the only currency we possess. We've also got time and attention.

So they get their high, then after a while its back to feeling like shit and being unsatisfied and trying to figure out how to get that good feeling back. So they buy in again. They pick a side. They keep chasing feelings, running from bad ones, and the cycle repeats.

I think, the biggest problem with all of it isn't necessarily that people are chasing happiness, btw, its that they don't understand what happiness is not. It's that they're chasing an illusion of happiness strictly defined as a positive feeling. Or unhappiness strictly defined as a negative feeling.

Happiness isn't something the media or anyone else can define for you. It's up to you to figure out what happiness is for yourself. Your idea of happiness may differ from my idea of happiness, but you'll know it when you see it. But you can't do that if you're convinced that happiness is this or that or whatever, or that its at the end of some endless trail and you'll get there eventually if you follow the breadcrumb emotional highs along the way, and if you buy this product or that it'll help you get further along then your competitors who, incidentally, are racing you there? (da fuck?).

I can't tell you what happiness is. I can't tell you what it is for me, even, cause I'm still figuring it out. 

All I can tell you is that lately, I've been far more interested in pursuing balance than just about anything else, and its helped me gain a perspective I never had the luxury of seeing from. I feel more... myself.

The point is, though, that feelings are weather. Not end states or goal states or happiness or unhappiness. We don't get angry at the world for raining on us even though we might not like it. We might feel better if the sun is shining, but we don't hate it if its hidden behind some clouds or whatever. We don't abandon our lives just to find sunny places. Well, most of the time, anyway. Some people do. Most of us will just take trips every so often (and we should! Its fun!). But the point is, regardless, we live where we live, and the weather is just the weather. We adapt to it, and work with it, we don't stamp our feet at the clouds and yell at them to stop raining. We put on a raincoat. We don't shoot at the sun cause we got a sunburn. We wear sunblock. When it rains, we aren't cursing the planet because it rained, even if we might not be happy with it. We recognize it as a fact of life.

You live in your own world, and emotions are your personal weather. They're a fact of life. They come and go. When you see that, when you understand that, you stop trusting them to lead you to happiness, cause your feelings have no idea how to get you there.

TLDR:

Mass marketed memes have been passed down as prevailing wisdom with content tailored to teach us discontent, not personal contentment. Your emotions aren't you, they're all temporary, and they're all okay. You take the first step toward fulfilment when you realize happiness may not neccessarily be what you thought it was."