The misguided quest for happiness

Sorrow prepares you for joy. 

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, 

So that new joy can find space to enter. 

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, 

So that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. 

Kahlil Gibran 

The Western notion that happiness must be achieved at all costs leaves people disappointed and even miserable when they can’t become happy. They feel guilty, thinking that they have fallen short, as if happiness is something out there waiting to be found, an end point, or the ultimate goal in life. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his influential book Man’s Search for Meaning, “…it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy’.”  

Sadly, one of the drawbacks of modern culture is that the pursuit of happiness and being happy is perceived as more important than anything else. Happiness feels good and does us good, as it brings a lot of advantages. Yet life is not only about happiness; every day, we are confronted with inevitable disappointments, unpredictable events, and sorrow. That’s why there is nothing wrong with feeling sad from time to time. You’re not crazy if you want to feel anger or fear sometimes. Feeling bad is not a sin, not a sickness, and definitely not something to be ashamed of. The dark side of human experience and all the negative feelings we have are real; they are perfectly normal and a natural part of our being. Life is full of suffering and tragedy. It’s not bright all the time, and it won’t be. There will be a great deal of anxiety and despair. In order to be happy, aiming to maximise pleasure and minimise pain doesn’t work. A meta-modernistic life built on the satisfaction of pleasures is a deception, for as soon as we satisfy one desire, another comes; then we invent new desires. The need for pleasure becomes addictive. There is much more to existential contentment than optimum satisfaction and pleasure. 

The real paradox is that suffering does not impede happiness; rather, our negative experiences can lead us to a happy life if we learn how to embrace and regulate them. Feeling pleasant emotions is certainly good, but an existence free of unpleasant emotions is impossible. Suppressing feelings that we don’t like and sweeping them under the rug may give us relief for a time, but it’s only an illusion, as we will experience suffering in the long run. Happiness cannot exist unless we open ourselves up to everything that can happen in life, including suffering and pain. To understand happiness, we need to accept sadness. As Nietzsche said, “…happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together!” (Nietzsche, 1974. pp. 270). There is no such thing as never-ending happiness. Just as too much unregulated sadness or anxiety can leave someone stuck or lead to depression, too much happiness can be detrimental as well. Likewise, a good life is not necessarily the by-product of high levels of happiness. How can we learn about ourselves, others, and the world without experiencing any challenges, any suffering? Change at the existential level is a necessity and it comes only with facing our personal and societal problems, with being willing to confront the tragedies and existential problems of the world around us. 

Human living is a Sisyphean task, Camus (1975) wrote, explaining how our lives resemble that of the mythological king Sisyphus, who was given the eternal punishment of rolling a large stone up a hill by the Gods. Every time Sisyphus reaches the top, the stone rolls back down; it becomes a never-ending, repetitive task. The term ‘Sisyphean task’ thus became synonymous with what people have to do every day – senseless work. For Camus, rolling the stone up the hill and seeing it roll down again is actually what challenges us, it’s what helps us grow and flourish. Sisyphus has to accept the absurdity in order to overcome it. This is definitely not a comfortable state, or a state full of pleasure, but it is a state that teaches us how to live fully. It shows us that a good life is possible even when we have struggles, as long as we have the inner strength to fight back against the absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus says, “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night”; but concludes on an optimistic note: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” 

The idea that people should feel good and life should be free of stressors has become the norm. However, this social pressure to be happy all the time can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. In modern cultures where happiness levels are highest, such as the Nordic countries, “social comparison” is probably one reason why the rate of suicide is also very high (Daly, Oswald, Wilson, & Wu, 2011). People who feel negative emotions, who don’t feel satisfied with their lives, compare themselves to the social expectations about happiness and feel that the world is unjust because most people around them are happy and they themselves are not. Indeed, research tells us that individuals who experience more negative emotions and also believe that others disapprove of these negative emotions feel more loneliness (Bastian et al., 2015). 

There is no point resisting our nature or pretending that our shadows do not exist. After all, negative emotions act as an internal system providing us with information about what is happening around us and to us. They can even have considerable positive outcomes. Some degree of dissatisfaction with our lives motivates us to make changes, some amount of confusion and self-doubt may increase our performance; and sadness may make us more alert to details, give us the opportunity to reflect and process experiences, and increase our creativity (Andrews & Thomson, 2009; Runco, 2007; Wheatley, 2002). To live is to experience the full range of emotions. 

Associating the good life with feeling good all the time, or even most of the time, limits us. A good life requires the pursuit of meaning and purpose by embracing both positive and negative experiences. Mastering the pain inherent in this world is one of the most important things we can do to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. A good life also requires an authentic self. Minimizing and ignoring our weaknesses and limitations will not lead us to authenticity. A good life requires freedom. And to become free, we need to accept life with its meaninglessness, and we need to accept ourselves. 

References 

1. Andrews, P., & Thomson Jr, J. (2009). The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems. Psychological Review, 116(3), 620-654. 

2. Bastian, B., Koval, P., Erbas, Y., Houben, M., Pe, M., & Kuppens, P. (2015). Sad and alone: Social expectations for experiencing negative emotions are linked to feelings of loneliness. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(5), 496-503. 

3.Camus, A. (1975). The myth of Sisyphus (J. O’Brien, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 

4.Daly, M. C., Oswald, A. J., Wilson, D. and Wu, S. (2011). Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 80(3), 435- 442. 

5.Frankl, V. E. (1984). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Simon & Schuster. 

6.Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science. (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1882) 

7.Runco, M. A. (2007). To understand is to create: An epistemological perspective on human nature and personal creativity. In R. Richards (Ed.), Everyday creativity and new views on human nature, 91-107. Washington: APA. 

8.Wheatley, K. F. (2002). The potential benefits of teacher efficacy doubts for educational reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 5-22. 

This post was originally published in existentialcafe.com on 09.04.2017