The Backwards Law
Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to Be Happy” sh*t that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years - here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap:
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
This is a total mind fuck.
So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again:
Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.
It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law” - the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.
The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make.
The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance.
The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you.
The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.
~Mark Manson