4 ms·
"Can you be ok with nothing ever bringing you happiness? I asked that question to myself, I finally said yes. It was a spiritual moment. Joy at last! No more ha
by hutzlibu 5y ago
"Can you be ok with nothing ever bringing you happiness? I asked that question to myself, I finally said yes. It was a spiritual moment. Joy at last! No more happiness"
It seems like you tricked yourself, to put the pressure away of "must getting happy again" and felt the joy (which is happiness, no?) of being relieved of that stress.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoI would argue that joy and happiness are not the same thing. I have difficulty articulating it, but I think Ursula Le Guin expresses it well (because of course she does) in The Left Hand of Darkness: "I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy."
- podgaj 5y agoIt was not a trick, it was a deep understanding that changed me permanently.
- romwell 5y agoUnderstanding that it's OK to be broken and sad, even if it's always like that, is something everyone needs to learn, and the culture is changing to this understanding being the norm. Have you read Winnie-the-Pooh? I think the book, more so than the cartoon, reinforces that. Eeyore is perpetually and, seemingly, irreparably sad and unhappy, and yet it's just a trait that Eeyore has, not a flaw. Other characters are there for him, but his sadness is accepted. Some of us are like Eeyore; and we should treat ourselves the way Eeyore was treated by others. That lesson was, sadly, ignored.