chat

I feel you on that. Like I experience fleeting moments of happiness. Maybe I'll have a day or two where I think I'm experiencing feeling "happy" or "content", but how the fuck people just feel that way normally is just a mystery to me. Meds just help me from being stuck-in-bed, crying-in-the-walk-in-at-work depressed but yeah, mostly just kinda neutral or dysthymic a lot of the time

not trying to be dismissive at all but what has helped me somewhat is realising it's an emotion like any other, not some state of being which can be attained permanently. it's naturally fickle and fleeting. obviously the cruelty of this world makes it a lot more difficult to seek out than it should be. but reframing it in that way helped me a bit.

I wasn't really happy until I started transitioning. So for some, that's the answer.

Like, do you mean just wandering around head full of bliss all day? Like if you're not having that, then it doesn't properly count as happy? People have a wide range of emotions, they all count and all are pretty important. It's not good to walk around feeling unrelenting sadness or rage or happiness or boredom or whatever - unless circumstances warrant it I suppose, I'd feel sad for quite long if someone close to me passed away suddenly.

There's times, even at my darkest and lowest, where I'd have a breather or moment and feel pretty content and happy. And I'd lay down and just feel it, sometimes my old cat would come and cuddle and that'd be pretty good. It would go away, but would come back now and again.

Happiness as a state of being is probably more about the active work of having a community of people you love and trust, supporting eachother (mutually), things coming at ease, not challengeless or without failures but where those challenges can be met with effort and help and those failures aren't scarring and only help you grow and learn. And in smaller things, like your puppies, or gardening, or cooking for friends or family or a lover, etc. And probably growing into the person you want to be, when you're alone and thinking about how you want to act in the world being more like that person is probably some kind of happiness.

I firmly believe that happiness is a failed concept. It frames the fundamental emotion of joy as this attainable human state that we are supposed to be in. But joy, like all emotions, can only ever be temporary. If there is no joy, our lives will feel worthless and painful and we must do something about that. But just seeking joy, "happiness" or attempting to make it permanent is just as detrimental, as anybody who has suffered from addiction will know.

A much more useful word (in english) is content. You can be content with something, even if it makes you sad. When my grandfather died, I was sad and deeply heartbroken. I certainly wasn't happy, but i was content with how we said goodbye, how he was cared for in his last days, going out on his own terms.

ADHD and especially the medication made me realize how fickle our brain chemistry is. My meds go ham on my dopamine production/absorption and suddenly I'm doing good, finding some joy in my work, even if it bores me to death. Until it wears off and then sometimes I crash and feel sad, lonely and hopeless. But now that I am diagnosed and medicated, I am more content than I ever was because everyday i act instead of just being acted upon and it shows in all facettes of my life.

If you are rooted in a reality that you find fundamentally acceptable, that you are content with, you have a much better chance to endure the emotional storms. This is difficult and there is no guarantee. But it turns a non-existent emotional state into something that can be worked on, grappled with, and it is something that remains, regardless of how you feel in that very moment.

I just want to echo others' statements about seeking contentment and satisfaction.

for me, happiness and joy are guests, like sorrow and despair. my baseline is to seek contentment with those small, frequent moments in life that bring some satisfaction if we are brave enough to notice. a day's weather, a good meal, a conversation with a friend, whatever.

sometimes I am "happy", but I think it is unrealistic to expect that as a baseline. I tend to not be as aware of my surroundings in a state of joy. to chase something fleeting forever seems inappropriate and destined for dissatisfaction. like trying to hang on to something wild and free.

Happiness is a reductionist concept in a reductionist culture we're embedded in. I'd even say it's a mental trap. We boil everything down to a single simplified axis of "good" or "bad" because that is the mindset this society prefers, and most often, it takes the form of a mirage, an aspiration, a simplified memory. I don't think "happiness" is useful or adaptive at all.

You can break it down into joy, anticipation, pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, significance, optimism, inspiration, and many other things. Happiness is a blanket concept that covers all of these, but you're "supposed" to be having it... like all at once? That makes no sense. You'll have some at some times and some at others, and if you try to condense it all to a scale, you're always going to be deficient because there will be some of them missing at any given time. Like other blanket concepts (intelligence, athleticism, maturity, leadership), it's more accurate and helpful to keep the components broken apart instead of all rolled into one.

If it means anything to you, for much of August of last year I was remarkably affectively positive.

Happiness as an emotion is a transitory state. Even the periods in my life I look back on as happy times I wasn't happy all or even most of the time. I was dealing with all usual day to day cares and worries of everyday life.

Minimizing suffering, and thus maximizing the ability to experience happiness is a more achievable goal than being happy all the time imo

For me happiness is cat shaped, having a small little kitten creature curl up on my chest with purs reverberating through my bones it felt like an entire lifetimes worth of anger and baggage just fell off. At that point I understood my newfound purpose as sentient chair for this fluffy critter

Idk I think it's a learned skill tbh. It's the default human condition to always want more. I'm starting therapy in the new year for this

All feelings are temporary, it is silly to have a goal to always feel a specific way. Happiness is a construct that includes a variety of feelings anyway that are still unsatisfactory. That said you can structure your life and mind to make feelings you like happen more often.

seek contentment and satisfaction instead. on good days you'll feel happy from time to time, but constant baseline happiness is a lie to keep you on the treadmill working to buy things

Happiness is fleeting. The goal is to be content, but enjoy the moments of happiness

Climate anxiety makes enduring happiness impossible. There's a certain degree of stability and safety needed to feel happy and content, but as the earth under earth our feet crumbles, economic precarity rises higher and higher and any remnants of community are destroyed it, there can be no space for happiness.

I have to disagree with a lot of the posts here: there is true unfiltered pure happiness out there, just not for us at this time, and not for anyone living under capitalism

I haven't read it but a friend told me Sarah Ahmed's promise of happiness is helpful to think on the question.

i remember being happy with friends (or maybe nostalgia), while it wasn't a emotion i "felt" at the time, often feeling unpleasant stuff at times - i think i could describe happiness as a deep sense of immediate comfort when being in the company of a person and immediately being at ease in their company.

Looks like this fam!