Have you ever met one of those people who is always miserable, no matter how good his or her life is? An Eeyore sort of person? Now be honest, how often have you been one of those people? Of course, we all have. I'm certainly guilty. A friend calls it the "Poor Lil Old Me" syndrome, or PLOM.Why do we do it? We all know how we feel when someone else is miserable for no reason, often ruining a perfectly good day. We also know that it definitely doesn't help anyone. Perhaps we are afraid of happiness. "Now that's silly," you might say, "what is there to be afraid of with happiness? Isn't that what we all want?" Well, there is plenty to be afraid of with happiness.
Humans are creatures whose society is built on change. For the most part, there aren't any cultures that don't strive to improve, change, and grow. Humans thrive on change and improvement. Imagine if we reached a point where no more improvements could be made, and everyone was happy. A utopia, if you will. What would we do then? What would be out motivation; maintenance? I can't believe that that would be enough for the human race.
Does this mean that negativity and misery are essential to overall happiness? Is that not a paradox? Not necessarily. How do we know happiness without unhappiness? How do we know health without sickness, warmth without cold, or light without darkness? But that's another discussion.
I will leave you with this: Are you brave enough to be happy?
2 comments:
Good points.
There is much to be found in the world which is negative, and with our exposure to so much information, much of which thrives on pointing out "scary" things, we can become bogged down in our seeming inability to have any control over so much misery.
I have been guilty of this, but choose to focus on positives as much as I can and to dare to be happy despite what others may point out as bad things.
I may not be able to control what happens in the world, or even what happens to me, but I do have some control over my own reactions to these events, and I choose happiness. Some find it inappropriate at times, but even in death is humor, and I do find people tend to want to become morbid, over enthusiastically sad about bad things, yet minimally happy about good ones.
I agree about controlling your own destiny by controlling yourself.
I also think you're right about one thing, you can't be happy without sadness... it's inherent with human nature.
For example, the way the human eye perceives shapes is through contrast. In photoshop, when you want to "sharpen" an image, the sharpen filter does nothing except boost the contrast along the line. It makes one side very light and the other side very dark so the human eye can better visually identify them. I can't imagine a utopia where there's no struggle or sadness. Life can be a Utopia just the way it is.
on a lighter note, I read your posts the hour after they come out, and then forget to comment for like a week lol.
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