January Journal: Happiness

[liv]

hunningham asked about Happiness - what things (activities, people, things, thoughts) make you happy? Do you seek these out or do they just happen? I really like the scope of this question and the precise way hunningham asked it; it gives me an excellent reason to talk about stuff that's important to me but that I don't normally post about much.

There is one clear answer to what makes me happy, and it's connection. It's making friends, it's getting to know other people, it's spending time with people I care about. I am happiest when I know someone well enough that we trust eachother, so we can discuss in detail what it really feels like to be ourselves. Another part of what makes me happy is being able to do things that make other people happy, which comes out of knowing at least some piece of who they are.

Lots of things give me pleasure, food, sex, reading, flow, art, the usual sorts of things. And yes, I do try to set aside some time for pleasures. But those things don't make me happy, they don't elevate my mood much past the moment of actually experiencing the pleasurable thing. For me it seems so obvious that making strong connections with other people is the point of my life that I have to remind myself that this isn't a universal truth.

So yes, I do very much seek out opportunities to meet other people and to get to know them and to spend time with people I love, and possibilities for doing nice things for them or learning more about them. It's why I do a lot of community volunteering because it's a way to come into contact with lots of people, some of whom become friends, some of whom I just happen to see some glimpse of, but it's all more connection and more happiness. It's why Dreamwidth is still my online home when the rest of the world has moved to Facebook and Twitter, because reading all your posts and having conversations in comments goes a long way towards making me happy when geography means I can't have in person contact. It's why I pretty much arrange to spend all my leisure time in situations where extended conversation is possible, and rarely want to do things like going to the cinema or to clubs or loud pubs, because why waste hours in the company of my friends when I'm not actually feeding the connection between us?

When I was a teenager I was reading a lot of French existentialists, and one insight that struck me was the concept of happiness as labour. Being happy is not only a matter of luck, it's a matter of choice, it's something you can deliberately pursue. I mean, of course luck comes into it to some extent, it might well be that your external circumstances are completely awful in ways you have no control over, I'm not one of those people who think that you can magically fix everything with a positive attitude. But in as far as you have any choice about anything, you can choose to work towards your own happiness or not.

I remember an argument between my mother and my brother, one of those very typical parent-teenager conflicts where Screwy thought Mum was being too controlling or interfering, and Mum protested that she just wanted her children to be happy. And Screwy said that maybe he didn't want to be happy, maybe he cared more about being ethical and making the world a better place. I am not like that, I do want to be happy. I don't want to be entirely selfish, of course, and anyway that wouldn't make me happy, I get far more happiness from making other people's lives better than from hurting other people. But I do consciously choose to live my life in a way that brings me most happiness, because I maximize my chances of making connections with other people.

[January Journal masterlist; there's still quite a few spaces so do feel free to add some more prompts even if you didn't get to it in December! Or indeed to make a second request if you're already in the list.]

Comments

[kerrypolka]

It's why I pretty much arrange to spend all my leisure time in situations where extended conversation is possible

I love this. I've never thought of it in exactly those terms before, but it's a great way of framing it and working towards it.

[pretty_panther]

Very interesting and I agree about the way dw comments and interaction can make people happy, and I feel it allows for a deeper connection in some cases.

[falena]

This was such an interesting post, it resonated with me a lot.

[hunningham]

Interesting. I'd asked about this because it's something I've been mulling over myself, and thinking that some people may have a gift for happiness, but for me, it's something to be made, to be built. Like a path over rough ground.

[metaphortunate]

Huh. Now I need to think about whether I can start building that path again at some point.

[hunningham]

I was thinking about this and my path is made by walking and following the same route, so bogs are skirted, heather & bracken are beaten back by footsteps, and you can find the crossing places for streams & walls. And when the path is there, you can look around and see things, instead of watching your feet, and trying not to twist your ankle on a tussock. But you've got to walk your path regularly, or it will just fade away.

It's quite an involved path metaphor.

And then we can get on to following the crowd-beaten path, and the broad & easy path leading downwards, and perils of sheep tracks, and maps, and the path metaphor just goes on forever.

[jae]

I love this post so much! Your feelings on this are quite similar (though not identical) to mine.

-J

[kaberett]

This is a good & important thing and has Made A Thing Make Sense To Me - thank you! I am linking it onwards and will probably talk about it some more with my counsellor (specifically, the happiness-as-work thing).

[hunningham]

Thinking about this some more. My happy is often time on my own, rather than other people. Walking on my own is often happy. Or little things - like branches against the sky, or sitting down with an old and well-loved book.

[ephemera]

*reads with interest*

The idea that one can choose to work towards happiness, rather than depending purely on circumstance to provide, is a really powerful one (and, as you note, not the same thing as positivity fixes everything! Yay! which - not so much)