True happiness seems so elusive doesn’t it. There always something that seems to be standing in the way of it.  This post is in response to a recent comment;

No-one ever interferes with your ability to be happy.  Your happiness is entirely down to you.  Here’s the formula for true happiness;

The perception of freedom to be yourself + a focus on something greater than your sense of self.

Now the world is a crazy, screwed up place filled with crazy, screwed up people.  If you stop and think about almost any aspect of it, logically and deeply enough you’ll realise that little of it makes actual sense.  But there is this pressure to keep moving, to never stop and think.  Got to keep moving, being productive or you’re wasting your time, your talent etc.

But really look at any other form of nature, plant, fish, bird or other animal and you’ll see they spend much of their time resting and relaxing.

photo credit: Hello, I am Bruce

But not humans, because we’re all so smart rushing around so that one day when we’re old and our body (and possibly our mind) starts to wear out, we can then relax all day and contemplate what’s important in life.

Society never wants you to stop and think about anything more meaningful than Britney’s latest escapade because if you thought about it, Society would have to change.  So it keeps pressurising you to keep moving.

But the challenge of life, and the secret to happiness, is whether you can be true to yourself when all else demands otherwise.  You see, the conventional wisdom of Society is the collective thoughts of us all.  The lowest common denominator.  It is the outward manifestation of our collective Ego.

Why then, do we conform?

We conform because the world says this is what you should do.  You’re a bad person if you should want to do something for yourself.  You should want to do something for me.  And because there is strength in numbers we look at what they say and even though our inner guidance screams ‘No. No. No’

We say that is just our selfishness.  That is just a signal of our evilness, our poor design.  We must be as the book, the Teacher and Society tell us is good.

photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

And so we train ourselves out of our inner wisdom.  We struggle to contort ourselves into shapes that are unnatural.  We get confused because this teacher says this, that book says that.  Our mind becomes amaelstrom of swirling contradictions.  A whirlwind of rules and regulations we should obey.

And yet all sense of solid grounding has gone.  We have no measure to judge by.  So we live in the dark.  Filled with doubt, insecurity and confusion.

photo credit: JTHammond

From this place we have, seemingly, lost control of our destiny.  And so what others do, or do not do, seems to hurt us.  And so we feel bitter when we see the greed and selfishness of others.  Believing that their weakness could lead to our unhappiness.

Yet the truth is that we do not need others to get their act together before we achieve true happiness.  We can achieve true happiness, right now, if we get our act together.

But to get our act together will require two things.

Greed and selfishness.

Yes.  Those much maligned traits.  But we need to look at them in a slightly different way.

Conventionally the view of life has been that comfort, material possessions and so on were the necessary ingredients of a happy, fulfilled life.  And obviously since there are only so many material possessions to go around, someone having more than their fair share is taking away from someone else.

It turns out that the truth is that comfort deadens the soul.  Happiness is an emotional state that is almost entirely unrelated to material wealth.  It is possible to be happy in a hovel and depressed in a palace.

So let’s look at this in a different light.  Happiness comes from being yourself as fully as possible.  Yet other people do not know you and do not really know what they want.  They think they want comfort, but they really want to be themselves.  So these misguided souls pressurise you to fit in with their view of what will make them happy.  If you go along with them, you validate their perspective and compound their erroneous thinking.

And if you refuse to go along with ‘those who know not, what they do’, then you weaken and challenge their viewpoint.  To them this feels like an attack and so they will ‘defend’ themself from your greed and selfishness.

So now you have a decision to make.  Do you want to appear unselfish and yet assist, and even join, them on the path to greater misery?  Or do you appear selfish and greedy and offer them a hand to reorient themselves to a happier life?

photo credit: Ivan Peplov

To be happy requires the selfishness to make being yourself and sharing yourself the main priority of your life.  And it requires the greed to want happiness above all else.

This is why you have the instinct to be selfish and greedy.  All instincts are built in to help you find your way.  It is only through their denial. mistaken perspectives and false assumptions that selfishness, greed and other similar emotions become distorted into something ugly.

Tags: Finding Happiness // 3 Comments »