Happiness, the Root Emotion

I realize that material things don’t make me happy. I also don’t find happiness in teasing others, losing friendship, or even my addictions anymore. I’m somewhat a miserable addict… I guess I’m outgrowing these things. I find entertainment in TV, video games, smoking, alcohol, and the internet; but these are just mind-numbing experiences during which I don’t have to worry about anything else. I do find a grander happiness in travel, spending time with my family, being all inclusive with friends, research and hard work, and most of the time my thoughts. I’m very happy with my thoughts! I’m not always deep thinker, but I catch glimpses of deep insight at random times. When I am unhappy, I don’t accept that as part of my true self. I hope I’m not lying to myself about being depressed, anxious, or nervous. It’s not that I don’t accept these as possibilities, but because I realize these things are always temporary, they are not truly me. I relegate them as relapses, part of being engrained in society, or temporary realizations that life really is difficult but still always a beautiful thing. That’s why I don’t stay mad long at people, get too upset over failure and always tend to find beauty in the most difficult, frustrating situations.

When I was younger, I found it very easy to never rationalize anger or emotion. I think that although anger and negative emotions are part of being human, happiness is the base of our core and every other emotion is just a distraction from it. Love is a permanent happiness; anger is choosing to ignore happiness; sadness is a difficult emotion but a different way of viewing the opposite of happiness; relaxation is subliminal happiness, etc. etc. Happiness sometimes comes easily and other times we have to work very hard to find it. Finding happiness is a pejorative phrase when seeking happiness. Happiness is always there because it is a relative thing, but only when we’re distracted from true happiness.

Our souls are happy, curious little things. Little only because we don’t fully understand or appreciate what our soul has to offer us. I believe our soul is an infinite source of happiness… reality is an infinite source of unhappiness. Because we can’t balance these damn things without help, we find false happiness through addiction, artificial love, and the belief that the world is outside our control. Remember, it is much easier to go from anger to happiness than happiness to anger if we forget why we are ultimately here (meaning most of us are stuck in the present). Realizing the bigger, better things in life we say ‘puts things in perspective.’ This thought is funny because we never prospect anger, just usually happiness. We all want happiness in the long run, not anger. Then why in the short run is anger easier to come by than happiness? In writing this, I generalize in that anger is the opposite of happiness and vice versa, but I really mean any negative emotion versus positive emotion.