Happiness

There are times when I feel as though I'll never be happy. Life feels generally unsatisfying for no particular reason, or for a million reasons that all present themselves at once with seeming authenticity. In this state, it feels to me like being pulled down into dark water, and it feels like I have always been there and will never get out. These times are fortunately fewer and further between than they once were.

This state of thinking and feeling can be a toxic pattern into which I get locked, a reaction to a momentary sense of dis-ease or displeasure. All of which can feel very real and all-encompassing in the moment. The words "always" and "never" often come up, signifying that this is a story that has taken hold of my consciousness. As with taking a test, nothing is always always true, or never never true.

Another distinction is that thinking "I'll never be happy" is different from "I feel sad." Really, truly feeling sad is feeling filled with life force, with the power of my attachment, my loss, my disappointment, whatever uncomfortable feelings are arising, and letting them move within me. When I am in the place of "I'll never be happy," I am not letting myself feel those feelings, nor am I moving past them.

United States culture is quite attached to happiness, the pursuit and accomplishment thereof. Oprah Winfrey, may she be blessed, has built an entire industry upon promoting the practices and products that will engender happiness in the consumer, as though happiness is not an emotional state that arises within us, but something we need to imbibe. My suspicion is that we are so preoccupied with happiness because our society is desperately unhappy. According to some studies, social equality is the primary indicator of a healthy, happy society. Living in such disparate conditions between great wealth and poverty, we are constantly aware of our place within this society, between those that have more and those that have less. Either direction seems tantalizingly close. At any moment we might experience a windfall of success, we dream, or a devastating loss that leaves us empty-handed. All of this speaks to a mindset of lack, of not having. My intrapsychic experience of being dragged down correlates to other experiences I have around feeling threatened by failure, by loss, by my fears that I cannot meet the demands of my life.

I wonder if my experiences of unhappiness are not necessary for being more essentially grounded in reality. Instead of withdrawing into fantasies and wishes, I am truly seeing my life as it is and seeing how it differs from life as some part of me wishes it could be. Without that dissatisfaction, would I have any impetus to work on myself? If I simply accepted life in a state of endless bliss, would I bother to be compassionate toward my loved ones? Which isn't to say that unhappiness is good or happiness bad. My whole humanity contains all of these experiences. What endangers me is the "always always" and "never never" stories, and reacting to my pleasures and displeasures with a fearful retreat from my experience.

When I stop to open myself to these underlying fears, however, something shifts. That intensity of feeling arises and passes. I walk on solid ground and feel that experience of being pulled down, but what I notice is that it is like gravity. I am not, in reality, being made to drown. That downward energy is met be the support of the earth, who holds my experience and lets me become more deeply rooted.