I'm on the Pursuit of Happyness

Are happiness and desire mutually exclusive?

Let's say that happiness (as a state of mind) represents your satisfaction with your current situation. If you're not getting what you want, your desire is greater, and you're not happy about it. But then once you get exactly what you want (or more), then you're perfectly happy, and there's nothing more that you desire.

So if you're an ambitious or demanding person, there's obviously a lot of things that you want, out of life and from yourself. Does that make you doomed to dissatisfaction? Why is it so hard to, as the saying goes, have your cake and eat it too?

Word Dissection 301

I think a lot about the meanings of words. Why we favor using some words over others, and what all isn't being said you when do say that word. It's something I like to do; I can almost call it a hobby.

Recently, I've been thinking about the word "should."

Should I go to this? What should I wear to this dinner? Maybe I should just call this off, etc. You get the idea.

We use the word so often that its meaning is pretty much skipped over now.

When I hear someone say the word "should", I interpret that as personal weakness.

Why?

When you ask "How should I act in so-and-so situation," sure, you may be just asking for advice, but it goes deeper than that. At some level, you're rationalizing the risk of failure, because you yourself are afraid of failure. It's a perfectly human thing to do. But too often, it's easy to get caught up in the game of "Maybe I should do that instead of that, then X will happen. Ugh, I can't decide", and you either end up doing something half-assed and half-hearted, or nothing at all out of fear. Then you feel bad about it afterwards.

Who holds the power behind the word "should", anyway? I imagine most people don't take that into consideration. Why do we make the decisions we make after we come to a "should" split? Are we doing it for ourselves? For a friend? So something will or won't happen? Because of the social consequences?

I really believe that we, as humans, don't focus enough in a single time frame. I talk to friends and they're freaking out about some test next week, or gushing over some dumb little mistake they made and how it's frustrating them right now. What about the present? It's the only thing you have real control over anyway. People just don't seem to think enough about, what am I doing RIGHT NOW, what am I feeling RIGHT NOW, etc. They're too focused on what's around the corner, or the footsteps they leave behind.

When you think, Should I blah blah blah, you're taking yourself out of the present, and into an imaginary future. As much as we WANT something to happen, it usually doesn't turn out exactly that way, and we know this! Yet, we pine and pain ourselves about it anyway, and repeatedly try to FORCE a given moment.

Usually, when people say the "S" word, it's like they're giving the power of the decision to an imaginary boardroom that scores them like a panel of Olympic judges. To them, it's like their life is being watched on some hideous reality TV channel, and the ratings go up or down based on what they do. If you've watched the movie "The Truman Show", then you probably know what I'm talking about.

Should you ask a girl to dance at a club or should you try to buy her a drink and chat her up first? Will she push you away or think it's cute?

Those people are either too inexperienced or immature to know the consequences, or at least do what they feel is right and deal with it. What's more disturbing, they seem to be CONTENT with the mundane and expected, rather than have the courage to try something new.

Bzzzt!!! WRONG!

Not only is this childish and inaccurate, it's done for the wrong reasons. I believe that people in general are better off if they do something, with confidence, because THEY WANT to. Not because their mom wanted them to do it, or because it'll look better on their resume. Imagine if you were stuck between a hoity-toity major you were expected to do but didn't like, and a major that was less "prestigious" but actually enjoyable. What would you do?

Is it like society WANTS you to do something anyway? No. Truthfully, in the end, most people either don't know or don't care. Do what you want to do.

Now, I'm not telling you to go and rape the next hot person you see outside, or go and steal an expensive car out on the street, just because you WANT to. The point is to shift away from the idea that you can't do something because of so-and-so obligations. If you want something, make it happen! The real question is whether or not you want it badly enough to face those possible risks.

Many of the greatest memories that I have happened because I disregarded imaginary consequences, and stuck to my guns. My first kiss, getting my football autographed by the UT football gods at the Hex Rally, some of the wildest nights of my life, and discovering who my best friends really were are some examples. I'm sure many people can relate.

The take-home lesson here: Keep the "S" word out of your life as much as possible. Fuck what society thinks. If you find you're asking yourself "Should I?", be aware of the possible consequences, then do it anyway. Don't settle for the expected. Keep your power, and live for yourself. You'll be a much better and more honest person if you do.

Radical Simplicity

I wonder what it is with human beings that requires life to be so damn complicated.

Maybe I'm just being an idealist, but I feel jaded. I'm getting tired of games. That's what it all seems to be.

Reality Check

They say seeing is believing.

So if you see something happen, does that make it right, by default? How much is going on behind the scenes that we're not seeing? How much of what we're seeing can we even believe in the first place? What if it's all a dream? How do we even know what is a dream and what isn't?

There was a study done where two groups of rats were each dropped into two separate tanks of water, one with a small "island" that the rats could find and swim onto, and another which was completely filled with water. After one group found the island, both groups were taken out. Researchers repeated the experiment, this time removing the island so both tanks had nothing but water. They found the "island" group kept afloat and swam twice as long as the "haha, you're fucked" group, which aimlessly splashed around in circles. Presumably this was because the "island" group, having memory of an oasis of sorts, had the mental endurance to keep looking for something it believed to exist, even if it no longer existed.

If a rat can push itself twice as hard by that kind of mental image, even if it was just an illusion, what is a human mind capable of?

Let's rattle the clouds here a little: What does that mean about ideas like faith and religion?

I walk down the street and wonder sometimes, how does another person see what I perceive to be my own reality? Do they remember the detailing of arches, lines, and curves of buildings, the collective movement of people, cars, and clouds, or the distinctive scrape of shoe soles against sidewalk, the way I do? When I smell something, I'm reminded of some part of my past, but what does that other person experience? What am I missing out on? When I close my eyes, do other people just see plain black, or a hazy collection of flickering green, purple, and blue lines, as I do?

Reality is what your senses can perceive and gather together in your brain. So it's not really everyone's world we live in, or everyone's reality, to be specific. It's your own reality, and what you make of it. We're all just a bunch of reality-processing organs bumping around in the darkness of what we call a universe, our body parts being the tools we use to interact with that reality.

It's a very sobering thought.

So, you exist in two different forms so far: the body and the mind. The mind processes the reality, and the body interacts. Let's take that thought one step further. What's even higher than that plane of existence? What drives the meaning behind the interactions, the interpretation of the reality presented by the mind?

A soul?

Three forms of existence. Body, mind, and soul.

I think I'll leave it here for today.

Epiphany

I'm reading a book called The Dip, authored by Seth Godin. It was recommended to me by my good friend, and I recommend it to anyone who still reads this (Who am I kidding, I'm probably talking to just the one 47 year-old balding guy, still single and living out of his parents' basement in Saskatchewan. Hah!)

The Dip is only 80 pages long, and reads like a blog post, but inspires like Chicken Soup for the Soul books (not that I read those either). If you're feeling depressed or frustrated about anything (like your O-Chem grade, perhaps!), I especially suggest at least skimming through it before you do something crazy. Like rolling a pair of dice to decide how many times you'll go out this semester, in the hopes that it will raise your GPA. The book gives you a fantastic new perspective on life, no matter where you are on it.

In any case, after reading The Dip. I'd like to leave this quote I've come up with. I know, I'm so proud. I'll make it famous someday.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but if you quit at five hundred and go back home, then you've just spent a thousand miles of your life going nowhere."