Should we pursue happiness?

CATHERINE HOOLEY MANAGING EDITOR

Some people have business goals and others have goals for fitness, but almost every person has a goal to be happy throughout the course of their lifetime. Whether it be the people surrounding someone or stress coming from a bad environment, the natural human response is to look at how we can improve our lives in an attempt to become happy, which is exactly what we shouldn’t do.

It’s not negative to have goals or keep note of things that could be improved in someone’s life because that’s what keeps humans motivated. However, it is harmful to wait for happiness to come from these changes. If someone is waiting for happiness to come from situational change, they are bound to be disappointed because happiness doesn’t come from circumstances; it is a mental state.

This does not mean that certain situations have no impact on one’s mental health. They do. Humans are reactive, and if something good or bad happens, the brain will have an emotional response. But long-term contentment with one’s life does not come from others; it comes from a state of acceptance.

The Backwards Law by Alan Watts states that desiring a positive experience is a negative experience, and accepting a negative experience is a positive experience. He believed that the constant pursuit of happiness only creates dissatisfaction because it reaffirms that we lack it in the first place.

Always chasing happiness is a guaranteed way to feel like one will never obtain it. When people focus so intensely on what they don’t have, happiness starts to feel abstract. Even if someone is hitting all their goals, there will always be something that isn’t going perfectly: that’s life. If people learn to accept their life as it is, that doesn’t necessarily mean they lack motivation. Acceptance for what is going on in someone’s life in the current moment creates a headspace for gratefulness but also growth.

Pressure from social media and competitive social structures makes many people think that feeling anything other than pure joy is wrong. Humans don’t have a wide variety of emotions just to avoid them and it is crucial to allow oneself to be comfortable with emotions other than happiness. Giving the mind and body the space to feel what they need to feel, being present in the moment and not worrying about feeling the “wrong” emotions may make someone feel like they aren’t meeting their goal of happiness, but in the long term, an accepting mental state will benefit one’s happiness more than a solution.