Happiness, as a way of life
I've been meaning to discuss some aspects of my way of life, for quite some time now. This isn't an attempt at explaining myself, in the sense of apologizing, far from it, but rather in the sense of trying to make more sense, both to myself, and to others. Having to delve into this and write it down forces me to think about it, and might inspire others to give me further bits of wisdom. It might also cut down on the number of explanations I have to provide, by allowing me to point at the appropriate posts (heh!). As always, the disclaimer applies, more than ever before, I think. Let's start with something simple (or at least, should be)...
My goal in life is to be happy.
Some people will disagree, oddly enough (but they have their own reasons, sometimes even quite good). But that's how simple it goes for me.
It's also very selfish. I do not (directly) care about the happiness of others in the world. I don't aim to destroy their happiness either. Actively making other people unhappy is unpleasant to me, providing a nice safety in the form of a strange loop. While I definitely have no proof of this, a naive impression that I get out of this is that if everyone would do this, the world would be quite a decent place.
There's some people which helping being happy gets me happier. This could be called caring. They also seem to experience the same effect with some other people, so there are kind of circles of people, where I care more and more about their happiness, peaking at myself. But at the end of the day, my happiness wins.
This sounds like it is ridiculously insensitive, at times, but you'd be surprised at how hard being happy is a difficult job, sometimes, and how much I have to work at it. I just can't spare this much effort for everyone, it would result in such dilution that there would be nothing left at the end.
Another thing which makes it not so evil is that I once discovered that you have to empower yourself to truly be happy. Someone else can't really "make" you happy. Happiness forged of your own making is both much stronger (I thought I was happy before, and I learned better!) and more durable (no one can take yourself away from you!). So, really, if other people want to be truly happy as well, they'll have to do it themselves anyway, I can't do it for them! One can be shown the path, but he has to walk the path himself, or something like that...
My goal in life is to be happy.
Some people will disagree, oddly enough (but they have their own reasons, sometimes even quite good). But that's how simple it goes for me.
It's also very selfish. I do not (directly) care about the happiness of others in the world. I don't aim to destroy their happiness either. Actively making other people unhappy is unpleasant to me, providing a nice safety in the form of a strange loop. While I definitely have no proof of this, a naive impression that I get out of this is that if everyone would do this, the world would be quite a decent place.
There's some people which helping being happy gets me happier. This could be called caring. They also seem to experience the same effect with some other people, so there are kind of circles of people, where I care more and more about their happiness, peaking at myself. But at the end of the day, my happiness wins.
This sounds like it is ridiculously insensitive, at times, but you'd be surprised at how hard being happy is a difficult job, sometimes, and how much I have to work at it. I just can't spare this much effort for everyone, it would result in such dilution that there would be nothing left at the end.
Another thing which makes it not so evil is that I once discovered that you have to empower yourself to truly be happy. Someone else can't really "make" you happy. Happiness forged of your own making is both much stronger (I thought I was happy before, and I learned better!) and more durable (no one can take yourself away from you!). So, really, if other people want to be truly happy as well, they'll have to do it themselves anyway, I can't do it for them! One can be shown the path, but he has to walk the path himself, or something like that...