Does anyone really ever get to choose to be happy? I know that there is a lot of "fake it 'til you make it" talk running around the world, but I'm not sure if I believe it. I have played that game, and have lost multiple times with multiple situations, ranging from silly issues such as, "I won't let that bitchy Walmart sales clerk with the condescending attitude and power-trippy behavior because they wield a scanner get me down", to the more serious: "He does love me; he has just forgotten." I have tricked and mixed up myself more than once, and here's the deal... pretending doesn't really work. I have decided the only way to be happy is to be happy. Period. And that can't, and won't, always happen.
Why are we so obsessed with feeling happy?
Obviously, it feels good. It would be nice to live on a little pink, fuzzy cloud of euphoria all of the time, in some ways. You'd get to smile a lot, and your eyes might start twinkling for no apparent reason. It seems as if half the books I read are absolutely dreary tales, but the other half involve a lot of eye twinklers. Apparently, this is a Key to Success. Imagine Dumbledore, or Little House on the Prairie's "Pa", without twinkles. It just wouldn't ever happen.
We all want to feel as if we are in control. If we master the art of happiness, then we find that we're okay. We have decided something, and it happened. Poof! Magical contentment. "I made it so, so it is so." Do we really think we're so omnisciently powerful as to bend the beams of the universe to always come out positively in our general direction? I think we all need to get over ourselves, and acknowledge that part of our humanness is to feel sad sometimes. Things are not always going to work out. It's not a character flaw. Acknowledging this reality does not make us drama kings and queens. It makes us real.
Voltaire was just trying to feel better about losing control. Poor schmuck.
Cheers,
Harriet.
Life is not about being happy. Happiness is a happy side effect that happens once in a while, but not always. If we were always happy, would we even know it? I rather think the human condition is such that we cannot be continually happy, because then happy would become normal and then we would equate happiness with ecstasy. We have to have the emotional chiarascuro to fully appreciate those moments in which everything really is shot through with light like golden thread ... being unhappy is what helps us realize that joy is precious. (ah, joy ... such a better word than happy)
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