Why We Should Stop the Pursuit of Happiness

I know this title alone will have some people up in arms, especially Americans. It's written into the fabric of our country, isn't it? The inalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe this phrase is almost as revered as the ten commandments used to be. In fact, don't we think something is wrong with the person who isn't doggedly pursuing happiness, or don't we at least think they're weird?

But it's gone too far. It's an obsession. We are obsessed with finding someone, some job, some house, some defining moment, some drink, some song, some book, some artist...and the list goes on. Someday we'll be happy if...

Maybe we can be happy when...  

I think we should absolutely have goals in our lives, and people to share our lives with. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that with the acquisition of some new passion or relationship, we will suddenly be all-encompassingly happy. Our lives are right now, in this moment, not yesterday in the "if only I had done things differently" or tomorrow in the "if I just do things differently". Today we have to choose who we will be, and what our lives will be about. A happy, fulfilling life is just a bunch of those todays strung together. We don't even always make meaning out of them until later.

Maybe it's time for me to shift my focus. My happiness plans don't tend to pan out well anyways, and this intense focus on finding my fix or my niche or whatever just makes me feel more tired. I know it will take some time to break the habit; it's so well-formed. If I feel a little uncomfortable or the silence becomes too oppressive, my instinct is to put a TV show on. If I feel restless, sometimes it's shopping. Or a nap, that'll solve everything right? It just makes me feel more discontent. This gnawing for satisfaction is seemingly endless, a hunger not easily sated by anything for long. 

Just to be clear, I'm not demonizing happiness itself. It has its place. If I was never ever happy, chances are that there might be some questions to ask myself. I'm saying that the unrelenting pursuit of it in abandonment of everything else or at the cost of everything else is nothing short of selfish, and even crazy.

My thoughts on this are not fully formed, but I am noticing that the more present I can be in each moment, the greater the capacity for feeling alive. Not every moment is going to be happy, but I can choose to be content in whatever emotion happens to be moving through me in that moment, and maybe that's even better.

Processing Depression (and Living Well Anyways)

Someone told me recently, “Usually when things go to shit, everything goes to shit”. It’s also true that there’s never a good time to fall apart; it will never be convenient for the people around you. It’s why people who are clinically and chronically depressed feel like they’re "too much", because in a way, our pain and sometimes crippling emotions are an extra burden for those around us to bear. I’m in a tough place right now, and I’ve been doing a fair bit of leaning on other people. But I have to believe—to get through day after day—that it won’t always be like this and I will emerge from this season stronger and more resilient to the hurricane-force winds that life brings. And then I will be someone others can lean on, and I will be fortified so that I don’t break under the weight of their burdens.

There’s a difference between feeling inconvenient and being inconvenient. Life is not all about taking care of ourselves; we also care for others. Others’ needs and feelings and hurts are rarely if ever convenient, but that doesn’t make them any less important. It’s in these moments that we do something inconvenient, that we step outside of ourselves, that we are showing love.

It may seem silly, but when someone lets me turn right out of a parking lot onto a busy street, I am so grateful. I feel that they have done something lovely. Do you know why? It was inconvenient for them. And yet, when I see people waiting to turn right, so often my instant reaction is that I have somewhere to be, that someone else will wait for them to turn. But here’s the thing: everyone has somewhere to be. But if we never act outside of what is entirely comfortable and best for us, what a mad world it would be. And what a mad world it already is. What if we made it a little less mad? What if each of us did one thing for someone else that was inconvenient every day? I don’t know if it would change the world, but I think it would start to change us.