“I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.
― Martha Washington
I sometimes wonder why a person feels miserable. For someone, misery is a constant companion. For others, it is occasional. And, of course, for a few, the feeling is absent altogether.
Someone may have everything, yet she may feel miserable most of the time. And the reverse is also true. A person may not have anything or only the bare necessities, yet, may not feel miserable at all.
Misery is more internal than external. Our immediate environment, the society we live in, is the same for all. Individual life stories vary, though. Yet, it does not justify why some people feel more miserable than others.
The reality is, unhappiness and misery exist and is disproportionately high for some and negligible for others. The fact remains that misery is more than a lethal weapon. It kills slowly but surely. And what’s more, like passive smoke affects the non-smokers as much as the smokers, misery affects everyone around and leaves its mark.
There are plenty of studies on the neurological structure of the brain and how it influences human behavior. Even after considering that, one cannot ignore the reality that society and the person’s immediate surroundings play a major part. The debate on nature and nurture is perpetual.
There are life’s circumstances that are beyond one’s control. Bad health, chronic illness, loss of income, sore relationships, and death of a loved one happen in life. All these can unsettle a person. But life has an inertia of its own. It does not help to hold on to one’s misfortune for too long and continue the pain.
Most often, misery or a deep sense of unhappiness happens due to a feeling of failure, a sense of inadequacy, that gives rise to helplessness. Success and failure are highly contextual and predominantly dictated by societal norms. Some people are so tied up with the fixed paradigm of success, failure, and how life should be that any deviation from the norm becomes too much for them to handle.
“I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course, we can never flee the misery that is within us.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
According to most experts, feeling happy or unhappy is mostly under individual control. Yet, individual control may not be as easy as it seems. Society conditions individuals with set norms of behavior. Most cannot break the shackles of these norms and so continue to remain unhappy most of their lives.
Let me explain it with a simple example.
You are going out for a joy ride, a day’s long drive, with your friends. You have an understanding among your friends. Whoever drives the car has the right and the responsibility to entertain the rest with music. So you, being the driver, try your best to choose the music that others will like and play the music on the car stereo while you drive.
As you intend to make all happy, you try your best to guess the kind of music they will love. You focus on your friends’ happiness and would feel happy once your friends are happy. To make your friends happy, you are playing that music that you think they will love, though you may not love this music yourself.
It may so happen, and most often it is, that the music you are playing, despite your best efforts, is not what your friends love to hear. Your friends, on their part, knowing that you are trying your best, also pretend to be happy. They do not say anything, as they do not want to disappoint you by showing that they are unhappy. Yet, you can fathom that you have been unable to make your friends happy. In the process, you also miss out on listening to the music you love.
In this scenario, neither you are happy nor your friends. But, all try your best. It is all about pretense and no sincerity. If you are a weak person with low self-esteem, you will feel miserable in this condition. Despite your best efforts, you have not been able to make your friends happy.
Doesn’t society dictate and expect us to do exactly that? To focus on others’ happiness at the cost of our happiness? Isn’t altruism all about this? We continuously do things to make people around us happy at the cost of our happiness. We are told that our happiness depends on making others happy! It is so much hard-wired into us that we do not even realize the futility of it.
It is a negative spiral in which most of us are perpetually stuck. It is a zero-sum game where no one is a winner. We are depended on others’ happiness for our happiness. Instead of focusing on our happiness on which we have some control, we are too focused to make others happy, on which we do not have any control.
Now, let us see how changing this paradigm of worldview can change our chance of being happy.
The same set of friends, same day, same long drive. The same understanding that the driver plays the car stereo. But, with a little change of thought. The driver plays the music that he loves to listen to. He is not to bother if others are liking the music he is playing. Others know that they may not love the music being played. But they are open to the idea of listening to different types of music. And hey, maybe they will discover a new genre of music, and start liking a different kind of music! Additionally, when their time comes to play the music, they can abundantly play the music they love. For all, the same reasoning would work.
No pretense. No undue expectations. No trying to please others at the cost of your happiness. No obligation for other’s happiness. In this worldview, you are taking responsibility for being happy.
Yes, this is a simplistic story. But you get a general idea. Instead of trying to make others happy, we try to make ourselves happy. And when we are happy, we have the capacity to exude that happiness to all around us.
Altruism will still be around. People will always go out of their way to help others. But that will be an act of love, not because it is expected, but because they love to do it. No show off, no pretense.
As we stop depending on others for our happiness, we start focusing on being happy. In the same way, others stop depending on us for their happiness. A lot of societal expectations on the individual to a set pattern of behavior will cease to be.
A lot of people may not like the idea as they lose the power to control others. At the same time, the idea that they themselves are solely responsible for their happiness is too alien to most. A scary thought! Who would they blame for not being happy? It is too much of a burden to carry.
The choice to remain happy despite whatever happens in life is a lifetime project - a perpetual work in progress. It is an act of daily decision-making. And there will be plenty of reasons not to be happy about, in our lives. But to be happy, one requires only one reason. And the reason is the choice he had made - the choice to be happy, come what may.
It is a journey one must travel alone.
Incidentally, I started writing on misery but ended up writing about happiness.
Share this post