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Can you imagine what it's like to be on the other side of you? I don't know you, and I wouldn't presume to know anything about you other than what you've revea

Can you imagine what it's like to be on the other side of you? I don't know you, and I wouldn't presume to know anything about you other than what you've revealed in your comments, but what I can say is that you've been handed enough lego blocks to build anything you want to, and it seems like you've set them aside because they're not the specific blocks that you had in mind to build the thing that you envisioned at some point in the past. No one automatically receives happiness. But you have an obligation to work on yourself, to do better than you seem to be doing, at building a happy self out of the life that you've made. That obligation is a result of choices you've made to build a family. Like it or not, you owe it to your wife and children to do the extra work of finding the meaning and sense of significance that is absolutely there waiting to be uncovered by you, and put to use by you. All of the extrinsic life experiences you've mentioned in your comments do not entitle you to wait for something to click, to be more than a 'yawning void of nothing'. If what you're talking about is something that you face no matter how many good, wise, smart moves that you make, then you may need to face the reality that you need treatment for depression or some other issue. No amount of travel or physical trials that you've put yourself through can supplant the reality that you can build for yourself by simply looking inward. In fact, it seems as though by constantly abstracting the search into various physical or worldly concerns, you've done the opposite. Happiness and fulfillment are moving targets. Personally, I suspect that I may never get all the way there. But I've spent some time on the road you're describing, and I know it's a dead end road. It's ego, it's self-indulgence, it's blame, it's a withering loneliness that makes you a small island, one that can be described in just a few seconds with cliches, easily traversed by foot, and forgotten or ignored by others. Whether or not you're clinically depressed, you should probably work on the quality of your relationships. Are there people that you can authentically connect with? If not, find them. They're out there. Are there people with whom your connection leaves you feeling bad or more isolated? Get rid of them. Are there people that you keep trying to connect with but it doesn't happen? Stop trying, and refocus your energy on authentic connections. Are there superficial connections that satisfy some social or validating urge that you have? Figure out whether your relationships with those people can be evolved into authentic, meaningful connections or not, and work on the good ones and discard the bad ones. It's an absolute tragedy to waste all of the time and beautiful experiences and memories that you could be accumulating with all of the people in your life, for lack of addressing a few relatively simple and totally fixable issues.

dawson 10y ago
This was an awesome response, and piece of writing.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Oh, yea those close to me hate it. Everyone else seems fine cause they only see the professional side, so as far as they know, everything is just A OK Great! Not only family but I have a high stress business to run and people counting on me! Thanks for taking the time to write that out though. In reality, all you write is correct generally. This wasn't intended to be a mini-therapy session, but for what it's worth the same message you state: "Happiness comes from inside" has been repeated to me literally as far back as I can remember. It's not practical though. I've had probably a dozen therapists over the years, found mentors I looked up to, tried to find meaningful relationships with peers, studied what fulfillment is etc...A few years ago I came to the conclusion that searching for "happiness" in all of these things was just not working. And beyond that the fact of the search turning up dry is a compounding problem. I'm not sure what happened, but as Rodney Dangerfield called it "The Heaviness[1]" is getting bigger. But I've spent some time on the road you're describing, and I know it's a dead end road. I'm curious what "road" that is? waste all of the time and beautiful experiences and memories that you could be accumulating Is there value in accumulating experiences? I mean I've accumulated a shitload of them, the problem is there isn't anything to do with them. It's like saving Polaroids. Is there a reason to other than looking at them again for a serotonin bump? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdjYmhrA-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdjYmhrA-A
- spangry 10y ago
  I'm grappling with similar questions, and have been my entire adult life. It feels like an unending existential crisis. I think both your comment and the parent comment (which are both very thoughtful, btw) pose an interesting question: is 'happiness' a meaningful or worthwhile goal? For me, at the current moment, I think not. The notion of happiness seems almost incomprehensible to me, to be honest. The way you've described your life reminds me of a book I've (partially) read: Mindfulness in Plain English. Even if you think Buddhism and meditation are a bunch of malarkey, the book itself is worth a read. What specifically comes to mind are parts where the author discusses why one should bother with meditation: ...you are human. And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. All of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, you sit up, take stock, and realize your actual situation in life. There you are, and you suddenly realize that you are spending your whole life just barely getting by. You keep up a good front. You manage to make ends meed somehow and look OK from the outside. But those periods of desperation, those times when you feel everything caving in on you, you keep those to yourself. You are a mess. And you know it. But you hide it beautifully. Meanwhile, way down under all that you just know there has got be some other way to live, some better way to look at the world, some way to touch life more fully... ...you suffer from the same malady that infects every human being. It is a monster in side all of us, and it has many arms: Chronic tension, lack of genuine compassion for others, including the people closest to you, feelings being blocked up, and emotional deadness. Many, many arms. None of us is entirely free from it. We may deny it. We try to suppress it. We build a whole culture around hiding from it, pretending it is not there, and distracting ourselves from it with goals and projects and status. But it never goes away. It is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception; a little wordless voice at the back of the head saying, "Not good enough yet"... Maybe the Buddhists have got it right. Perhaps the more worthwhile goal is cultivating a clear and unbiased perception of reality. Honestly, I have no clue; just putting forward an alternative to consider if you haven't already. If you do figure it out, I'd love to know... Here's a link to the book btw: http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm EDIT: reading firstworldman's sibling comment provoked another thought which may head off a semantic issue. Maybe 'happiness' is neither a meaningful nor meaningless objective; it's simply an ill-defined, subjective concept. So when people talk about 'attaining happiness', its possible what they mean by 'happiness' is objectively different to what other people think it is. From what I understand firstworldman to be saying, he has found 'authenticity of experiences and relationships' to be a worthwhile and attainable goal. Incidentally, this seems to square with Buddhist philosophy, which is largely concerned with attaining 'perception of authentic reality' (i.e. 'enlightenment').

dawson 10y ago

This was an awesome response, and piece of writing.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Oh, yea those close to me hate it. Everyone else seems fine cause they only see the professional side, so as far as they know, everything is just A OK Great! Not only family but I have a high stress business to run and people counting on me! Thanks for taking the time to write that out though. In reality, all you write is correct generally. This wasn't intended to be a mini-therapy session, but for what it's worth the same message you state: "Happiness comes from inside" has been repeated to me literally as far back as I can remember. It's not practical though. I've had probably a dozen therapists over the years, found mentors I looked up to, tried to find meaningful relationships with peers, studied what fulfillment is etc...A few years ago I came to the conclusion that searching for "happiness" in all of these things was just not working. And beyond that the fact of the search turning up dry is a compounding problem. I'm not sure what happened, but as Rodney Dangerfield called it "The Heaviness[1]" is getting bigger. But I've spent some time on the road you're describing, and I know it's a dead end road. I'm curious what "road" that is? waste all of the time and beautiful experiences and memories that you could be accumulating Is there value in accumulating experiences? I mean I've accumulated a shitload of them, the problem is there isn't anything to do with them. It's like saving Polaroids. Is there a reason to other than looking at them again for a serotonin bump? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdjYmhrA-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdjYmhrA-A

spangry 10y ago
I'm grappling with similar questions, and have been my entire adult life. It feels like an unending existential crisis. I think both your comment and the parent comment (which are both very thoughtful, btw) pose an interesting question: is 'happiness' a meaningful or worthwhile goal? For me, at the current moment, I think not. The notion of happiness seems almost incomprehensible to me, to be honest. The way you've described your life reminds me of a book I've (partially) read: Mindfulness in Plain English. Even if you think Buddhism and meditation are a bunch of malarkey, the book itself is worth a read. What specifically comes to mind are parts where the author discusses why one should bother with meditation: ...you are human. And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. All of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, you sit up, take stock, and realize your actual situation in life. There you are, and you suddenly realize that you are spending your whole life just barely getting by. You keep up a good front. You manage to make ends meed somehow and look OK from the outside. But those periods of desperation, those times when you feel everything caving in on you, you keep those to yourself. You are a mess. And you know it. But you hide it beautifully. Meanwhile, way down under all that you just know there has got be some other way to live, some better way to look at the world, some way to touch life more fully... ...you suffer from the same malady that infects every human being. It is a monster in side all of us, and it has many arms: Chronic tension, lack of genuine compassion for others, including the people closest to you, feelings being blocked up, and emotional deadness. Many, many arms. None of us is entirely free from it. We may deny it. We try to suppress it. We build a whole culture around hiding from it, pretending it is not there, and distracting ourselves from it with goals and projects and status. But it never goes away. It is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception; a little wordless voice at the back of the head saying, "Not good enough yet"... Maybe the Buddhists have got it right. Perhaps the more worthwhile goal is cultivating a clear and unbiased perception of reality. Honestly, I have no clue; just putting forward an alternative to consider if you haven't already. If you do figure it out, I'd love to know... Here's a link to the book btw: http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm EDIT: reading firstworldman's sibling comment provoked another thought which may head off a semantic issue. Maybe 'happiness' is neither a meaningful nor meaningless objective; it's simply an ill-defined, subjective concept. So when people talk about 'attaining happiness', its possible what they mean by 'happiness' is objectively different to what other people think it is. From what I understand firstworldman to be saying, he has found 'authenticity of experiences and relationships' to be a worthwhile and attainable goal. Incidentally, this seems to square with Buddhist philosophy, which is largely concerned with attaining 'perception of authentic reality' (i.e. 'enlightenment').