pursuit of happiness
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 consider myself blessed to have the life that I live, but I’ve never been able to shake my fixation on the former.
I tend to require tasks and benchmarks of accomplishment to feel on track. Be it a writing project, adjustment to daily routine, greater financial discipline or any other goal, I always find myself not only focusing on nearly a dozen of these at any one time but also feeling guilty or unhappy about not having progressed on them at the pace I’d prefer. Though I am starting at a happy place and merely pursuing an enhancement of that happiness, I continuously fall into the trap of making myself unhappy about not being more accomplished in my happiness.
Sigh...
I started rebelling against this idiocy some time ago, but I’m only now becoming more consciously aware of the dilemma. My rebellion was starting to feel like the onset of laziness - of accepting lesser standards and failing. The emotional confusion of this all has largely contributed to my distractions and impulsiveness of late. I seriously feel like a happy person, who is also unhappy, rebelling toward accepting happiness but being unhappy about allowing myself to be happy. At the same time, it’s not a huge problem in my life because, in truth, I’m very happy. I’m just a little confused.
At this point, I think I just need to accept that pursuing growth and creating goals of accomplishment are wonderful and necessary parts of being who I am and advancing my life; however, when I fail or fall short or even lose interest, the worst place I’m falling back to is “being happy,” so it’s okay. I don’t have to fear becoming static or falling into a rut or losing the potential for growth. I don’t have to see these opportunities as deadlines. That’s an important thing for me to overcome. After all, the vast majority of these interests have the rest of my life to be realized.
I tend to require tasks and benchmarks of accomplishment to feel on track. Be it a writing project, adjustment to daily routine, greater financial discipline or any other goal, I always find myself not only focusing on nearly a dozen of these at any one time but also feeling guilty or unhappy about not having progressed on them at the pace I’d prefer. Though I am starting at a happy place and merely pursuing an enhancement of that happiness, I continuously fall into the trap of making myself unhappy about not being more accomplished in my happiness.
Sigh...
I started rebelling against this idiocy some time ago, but I’m only now becoming more consciously aware of the dilemma. My rebellion was starting to feel like the onset of laziness - of accepting lesser standards and failing. The emotional confusion of this all has largely contributed to my distractions and impulsiveness of late. I seriously feel like a happy person, who is also unhappy, rebelling toward accepting happiness but being unhappy about allowing myself to be happy. At the same time, it’s not a huge problem in my life because, in truth, I’m very happy. I’m just a little confused.
At this point, I think I just need to accept that pursuing growth and creating goals of accomplishment are wonderful and necessary parts of being who I am and advancing my life; however, when I fail or fall short or even lose interest, the worst place I’m falling back to is “being happy,” so it’s okay. I don’t have to fear becoming static or falling into a rut or losing the potential for growth. I don’t have to see these opportunities as deadlines. That’s an important thing for me to overcome. After all, the vast majority of these interests have the rest of my life to be realized.