Yesterday as I walked home, I overheard a girl say to her male friend “Just love yourself”. She said it a number of times, each time getting louder. I thought about it the whole way home.
To see the unhappiness in people can raise an awareness of just how much we take our own happiness for granted. I think that we are naturally happy but sometimes cannot avail of it until it is placed beside other emotions or conditions, internally or externally.
When we see an injured person, we are highlighted to how we are not injured. When we witness a sickness in a hospital, we become aware of our perfect health. Our supposed ordinary selves is in fact a gift; a gift whereby asking for anything more is selfish.
When we experience the heart-break of another, the condition of our own ordinary lives should make us see what we have that shields us from that same sadness. Our sometimes feeling of a lack of anything should be reflected upon and transformed into the feeling of everything. No matter what situation we may find ourselves in, it could always be worse.
Love is something that can enhance this feeling of supposed normality. But I think that there should be a strong emphasis on understanding oneself before allocating that love onto another body. In a way, we should never be ready for this because loving ourselves can be made eternal.
Open your senses.
Realise that you are alive and be a feeder to life’s and thus your own promises.
I do not believe that we are, “Naturally,” happy. The first thing that we have to do is determine what conditions are necessary for us (individually) to be happy, and then having determined such, we must aspire to cause those conditions to come to fruition. Obviously, happiness will still be a matter of perspective and some things will make us happier than others, additionally, some things that make us happy may happen frequently and some once in a lifetime.
However, I must disagree with the assertion that happiness is a sort of, “Default,” position. I think how happy a person is will obviously relate greatly to how well that person’s needs are being met, and to some degree, how well that person’s wants or desires are being met.
It’s something of a cliche, but for the majority of people to reach a state where they may define themselves as, “Happy,” pretty much requires that the person adjust the criteria by which they can consider themselves happy. Settle for less, is one way to put it. As you would expect, to do so requires discipline, (especially if you happen to live in a consumerist/materialist society) so for this to occur is clearly not a default as it is a product of the will.
Young children are generally an exception, happiness is a default for them most of the time provided needs and low-level wants are being met.
Once again, that’s going to be a matter of internal discipline. We are not necessarily highlighted to our own health when we see a sick person. Sometimes we see a sick person and all that happened is we saw a sick person. In fact, to highlight oneself to this requires a deliberate focus inward, and I don’t think that is something we are always doing.
I don’t understand what you mean by, “Experience the heart-break of another.” How can an individual experience something that is happening to a different individual, unless it has happened to the first individual before, then I suppose he could relate, but that still wouldn’t be experiencing.
That’s true, but if the fact that it could always be worse is going to be the only criteria used to judge one’s own happiness, then you’re still expecting (some) people to be happy with pretty shitty lives. For example, should a homeless dude foraging in a restaurant’s dumpster for food be happy because there might be a different homeless guy somewhere who is not in walking distance of a dumpster?
I get that you’re saying that we shouldn’t attempt to love others until we can love ourselves, but I don’t comprehend the rest of what you are saying here. Would you be so kind as to elaborate?
MY TAKE ON HAPPINESS:
Personally, I think that happiness (in anything other than the momentary sense) is largely going to be goal-driven. In that sense, attaining happiness is going to be the same as realizing goals that you set for yourself. Obviously, if you set the goals impossbily high and never reach them, then you will never be happy except in occasional and momentary ways. If you set your goals absurdly low, then you may reach them and still be unhappy because needs and wants may be left unsatisfied.
Essentially, what I think a person should do to achieve happiness is to set goals in accordance with the minimum level of wants and needs that must be met in order to achieve some reasonable level of comfort and security. In the event that a person exceeds those goals, that’s all the better, but then the person must also have the discipline not to deliberately strive for more, but having exceeded their goals to say, “Okay, I have now done this and exceeded what my original goals were. Since I have reached a level over-and-above my original goals, I will now endeavor not to fall below what my original goals were, because, if that’s what made me happy once, then I should not require anything over-and-above that to be happy.”
