"Happiness" Isn't All it's Cracked up to Be!
I suppose I should preface this by saying that I write these words from the perspective of living in the US of A, and people have different approaches to life in different places.
In doing so, I will also add that this is a country where "Happiness" is actually written into the nation's founding papers — as in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in the Declaration of Independence — so I am taking that into account, as well.
But Seriously, folks!
Sometimes I get a little tired of all this happiness and all these quests for happiness.
The Blue Butterfly of Happiness...?
Not that there is anything wrong with being happy. I'm Danish by birth, and the Danes are routinely ranked as the happiest people in the world. In fact, this post was prompted by a visitor to our gallery earlier today who insisted on talking about one of these surveys and couldn't understand why we "couldn't learn to be happy" here in the US.
These kinds of generalized questions are generally head shakers for me... but I try to be patient.
First of all, happiness isn't a "contest," like some twisted type of international arms race!
But the main difference between Denmark and the US is that "happiness" isn't some front and center commodity we're constantly being told we must "quest" for. That's a very American thing. In fact, Danes are also extremely good at being depressed, with very high rates of alcoholism and suicide.
So there's that.
What's more, being depressed, or sad, or maudlin, or just "mellemfornøjet" (literally translates as "medium-mooded") are all acceptable states of being in Denmark.
BALANCE: And Therein Lies the Difference
The thing about "Happiness," when taken to extremes in an obsessive sort of way... is that it actually makes you UNhappy. Because you feel like a failure because you're not living up to some (often arbitrary) measure of how happy you should be.
Big Sur View
Few Danes I know worry about "how happy" they are.... they simply go about living life, and the net effect is that they very often end up happy... because — on the balance — they have more things to be happy about than unhappy about.
Knowing myself, and knowing my friends back in Denmark, I think they are often happier because they are not worried about being happy.
How's that, for a conundrum?
Joking aside, part of our problem in the US is that we are often not "allowed" to feel all our feelings. Maybe that sounds weird, but hang with me here!
The COMPLETE Spectrum of Human Emotions
Back when I was in college, I used to hang out with a lot of fellow Scandinavian students, and we would inevitably talk about cultural differences, from time to time.
Purple Heather
My friend Annette — a well-traveled young woman who also happened to be the daughter of the Danish Consul in Houston, TX — observed that the was mystified by the American men she had been dating because they seemed... "emotionally one-dimensional."
"It's like they only know how to be almost artificially happy... or very angry," she once observed.
I don't know exactly why that particular snippet of 35-year old conversation popped into my head, but it reminded me of something. A couple of months ago, I went in for my annual medical checkup and Dr. B asked me how I was doing... and I admitted that I had been feeling a bit "emotionally gray" as of late.
Well, she all but lost her nuts and started reaching for her prescription book to write me one for "happy pills" and a shrink....
... and I was like "NO, Rachel! Emotions come and go!"
Which brought me to my ramblings about happiness, today.
Close-up of a "Red Hot Poker"
I realized earlier that here in the US, we have all but "outlawed" any natural feelings that can't be classified as either "happy" (or derivatives thereof) or "angry" (because we're allowed to be "outraged" at wrongs!)... and anything outside that has somehow become a "syndrome."
And because it's a "syndrome," we need to take medications and have therapy, so we can go back to being properly happy. Or properly ANGRY that we're not happy.
There was a time when someone could be characterized as "A young man with a melancholic temperament." Now we just have Xanax.
I'm sorry, it doesn't fly with me.
Happiness isn't all it's cut out to be. And it's certainly no emotional panacea, especially if it's not caused by authentic life experience. What actually makes us happy (if anything CAN) is living a life in which we can experience the full spectrum of human emotions... without intervention and corrective pharmaceuticals.
My sadness is NOT a syndrome! Nor is my wistfulness. Or any of the 200 other emotions I might experience...
How About You? Are you "in the pursuit of happiness?" Do you KNOW what Happiness is and feels like? Do you think the US (and some other places?) have but limits on "acceptable" emotions? Do we tend to "medicalize" emotions that once were considered normal, like wistfulness, melancholia and so on? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
created by @zord189
(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180620 17:13 PDT
A good post! I don't think anybody I meet fully understand the what happiness is about. My wife and I talk about it as something that happens occasionally - mainly when we look at our sleeping children (when they are awake there is always quarrel and drama). It is almost impossible to think of happiness without including the sorrow. I cry when I am happy (lykkelig). The experience seems to include a horde of dead people.
I looked up the word, lykke, and it seems to derive from an old low German word meaning destiny - same word as luck. But it seems to have gotten another meaning in Danish. We don't use glad and lykke the same way - in English it would just be happiness . So maybe it means that you have to take in the complete life, the destiny, all included, to be lykkelig.
Also I think that apart from cultural divides we all know what it is about. Just like hygge. I have experienced that everywhere in the world.
I'm glad you stopped by to comment @katharsisdrill! I was hoping you would... another perspective from "over there."
It's an interesting experience — even after living in the USA since 1981 — to try to explain certain aspects of another culture. Like hygge. And lykke/lykkelig, as a representation of "happy."
As I read your comment I sense you're explaining "the full range of human experience" as the base stone (grundsten) of many aspects of life. And that's what I try to explain to people about "Danish happiness" when they bring up these surveys and reports.
If you're not defining life in terms of needing very specific things (e.g. "happiness") then you all all things, which then means you aren't as busy describing some things as "bad" or "not-good," and if you're less busy with worry, then you're closer to "lykke" which is just a general sense of satisfaction(?) with existence. It's not a specific thing you can put into a bottle and sell.
It seems perhaps that people in the USA are less "happy" because they are trying to define this thing by very specific concepts: "When I make $80,000 a year I will be happy!"
No. No you won't. Perhaps you will have one of life's puzzle pieces, but you will NOT be "happy."
The English language is oddly limiting, in some ways. I have tried to explain lykke and glæde and even velvære as parts of Danish "happiness." But then it's similar with the idea of "love." There is one word in English, and six in Greek... maybe it all points to what matters most to different cultures?
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Yes, I think you need to bring it all with you to be a whole person, tungsind, melancholy, sadness right beside joy and laughter.
I am not sure about how this is working in US culture, I only know it from a bit of travelling and art. I have meet quite a few (for some reason always New Yorkers) who sport the attitude you describe and who give the impression of something broken, but I have meet many other Americans who are more nuanced. If I should generalise I would say that as a whole people from the US seems naive to me. It might be part of what you describe.
I heard somewhere that the original 'pursuit of happiness' was 'pursuit of property'..before it was rewritten.
Attitudes such as yours can be VERY financiallydetrimental to the Psychiatric profession and big Pharma
Interesting — did not know that.
Yes, I'm very threatening to mental health and Big Pharma... I've been anti-medicalizing for decades, and that's evidently a hateful thing to do. God forbid we should be allowed to just live in peace with everything we experience and feel. That's practically UN-American! It's blasphemous of the Good Book of Corporate Profiteering!
I used to didn't dislike corporations as much as I do now.
Oddly enough corporate life span is decreasing...right now the average life expectancy of a corporation is about the same as that of a dog.
It's all about the spectrum isn't it... nothing new comes from consistency.
And yes... most unfortunately there seems to be an effort to achieve that emotional plateau of mental well-being... which really, once you get there, is just a flat plane desert of continuity.
I know small moments of joy from time to time but I don't know this happiness people claim they live with. Everything got be prefer for some people otherwise their "happy" place is a world of fire and grim stone.
I think if it becomes a drag to try and be happy that not what trying be happy it. Just enjoy the small things in life. I would rather wake up not regretting waking up than trying be some false happiness.
I sometimes feel its just a product they will sell to you in bottle or pill form. For many that just all it ever will be. Maybe one day I'll "find it" till than i'll just take some random joy here or there and call it "being happy."
As a formerly medicated American, I am of the opinion that true happiness is accepting ourselves and the world around us for all its spectrum of feelings and states of being. We can't change anyone forcefully, and it shouldn't be our job to patrol around looking for happy-code violators, as sad or painful as it may sometimes be to see that fear manifested.
However, some people do feel genuine excitement and joy each day, for no real "reason" other than it just feels good to feel good. Of course no one is happy all the time, we all ride that wave up and down.
Short version: take the bad with the good to find happiness (along the same lines as what you said).
Thanks for the post @denmarkguy. Some really good points you make.
For me, I let the chips fall where they be. I think being Happy is great. But if you were Happy all the time it would not be that special.
Personally, I think our "Maker" lets some pretty crappy things happen to us so we will appreciate the Happy times that much more.
Kind of like taking a vacation every week would NOT be special.
People always set the bar too high and they'll always be unhappy, no matter where they live. But Americans are the world champions, no doubt.
Like on steemit.
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Well my friend, If I agreed with you, then we'd both be wrong. ¿Isn't it? };) LoL
Well put - I find on steemit people have to censor themselves/emotions a lot more than other sites, as flagging and unfollows can be a worry. Especially when some kind of profit is on the line - so I often see those "Buck up" and be happy ALL the time posts round steemit. People like to shill happiness around here because it's hard to face realities sometimes.
Fucking zombies if you ask me. Nobody is meant to be happy all the time and if they are, well "La Dee Da" how fricken boring for them.
I like to feel all the hard stuff. I mean I don't want to drown in my emotions but I sure do want to feel each one.
Don't walk the world a smiling zombie!