We all believe in emotions: we believe we’re sad when we feel sad, angry when we feel angry. But, most of all, we believe to be constantly heading for Happiness.
Happiness is the emotion that guides us even (and especially) the moments when we are not feeling it. It’s our basic criterion for everything. Now, my concern comes when I focus of the extraordinary ability of this feeling to be more of a concept than a feeling. And concepts grow and change radically with environment influences.
If I try to look at the big picture, I find that my (western) culture describes a “truly happy person” basically as:
- functional (able to work and to have relationships, willing to achieve goals etc)
- harmless (submitted to morals, compassionate etc)
Two aspects that build what can be called social order.
This is a huge topic and I’m sorry that I won’t explore it totally. I just want to ask myself: is the happiness my culture makes me head for what really makes me happy?
A Rainy Day: I like to walk in it / want to dance in it if it is completely lashing down
Lost Luggage: I will calmly alert a member of staff and then proceed to hunt down the bitch who has it.
Tangled Christmas Tree Lights: I take one look at them, decide not to get annoyed and then sit and untangle them all.
From that you are welcome to learn what you wish about me.
This is why a lot of people don’t actually realise when a person is actually unhappy.
Sometimes I want to run away. Run away so fast, and never look back. If the right person come along and said “You know what, let’s do it, let’s go and leave everything behind” then I would. Sometimes I feel like I am asking for something as much as the world when really all I am asking is for just once to be happy. Just once in my life, is that really too much to ask for? I don’t think it is but for some reason almost everything and everyone else want to get in the way of me being happy.
So the second I get a chance to, I’m gone. I don’t know where I will go, where I will end up or how I am going to keep myself afloat but I am gone. Freedom and Happiness, that’s what I want and until that time comes along I will remain imprisoned and quite frankly miserable.
Sometimes I wish these actually existed.
