RE: Like a Madman I am - Absurd Oddities or What You Shouldn't Know About Me
I wonder if happiness really is what's important. I've recently come to the realization that I'm mostly only happy in retrospect. I can be in the middle of an amazing experience in an exotic location, and I'll just be kind of "meh" about it. Not that I sit around saying everything sucks. I do realize when I'm in the middle of a great experience, but I never feel the way I expect to feel. It usually takes a few weeks or months before I can look back and think about how "happy" I was.
I went camping with my family last week and never felt very enthusiastic about being there. I was in a beautiful location with my favorite people, but I was thinking about being elsewhere. My initial instinct was to beat myself up for not having as much fun as everyone else, but that just makes things worse. Instead, I realized that my happiness from that experience would come in time. I let myself be not-quite-happy and made an extra effort to participate in the experience. The trip was great and I'm confident that I'll get a lot of happiness from the memories.
I believe accepting unhappiness may ultimately be more beneficial than finding happiness. Happiness and contentment are important, but at the end of the day, they are just chemicals running through a brain. Even if a person's brain doesn't make as much happy juice as everyone else, I'd imagine that they can still have a "happy" life by accepting their perceived lack of happiness.
I bring all this up, not to argue, but on the off chance that some of your introverted-ness comes from a persistent mild unhappiness or dissatisfaction, like me. I haven't written this idea down before so I still don't know if it's bullshit or not, but I've been thinking about happiness lately and your last sentence brought some of those thoughts to the surface.
Love your posts! Sorry about the long comment. Brevity is not one of my strengths :)
Believe me, when I was actually in that situation, those things I write about now, I think most of the time I was not really happy or thrilled. That I become only happier now as I write and remember.
I was in a paradise for months then I was like "meh", the place, the people just lose their charm. When I try to recollect my travel experiences, I just realized that those really made me happy, good or bad.
When I say happy, it's like a general feeling. Not really running amok, or getting excited. I can't remember how many times in a day I'm feeling blue or totally dissatisfied with my life, but I try not to stay in that state. It might sound strange to you, but it means being happy when you're sad, angry, alone, or thrilled. It's pouring your emotion into the present, feeling and accepting it. I like myself for just being me, and I like the fact that I don't need to change or anything. I just like the way I am and it makes me happy inside.
Because nothing has to be changed in order to be happy, it's an inside job.
I understand. I think discussing happiness is like discussing art or love. The definition changes depending on context or the person using it. I took the last sentence of your post and went off on a not-very-related tangent. I hope you don't mind me working out some of my thoughts in your comment section.
This! Exactly!
For me, it's being confident that the low times are temporary, and if I simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'll inevitably get to a better place. It's knowing that the high times are also temporary and to soak up as much of those times as possible.
It would have been easy for me to fall into despair when I was homeless and recycling cans for food money. But knowing things would turn around kept me relatively upbeat and minimally anxious. Confidence that things would improve ended up with me getting 100 times more than what I had originally dreamed of.
It would have been easy to be devastated by a good relationship ending if I had believed that happy times were permanent. Instead, I enjoyed the hell out of the good times and accepted it when that particular chapter of my life was over. It wasn't painless, but it wasn't a mortal blow either. Same with making great friends on the road, it's important to focus on now, and not the "goodbye" looming over the horizon.
Good Lawd! This was supposed to be a 1 or 2 sentence reply. Better stop here before this thing turns into a novella. Fun talkin' with ya!
I'm a master of unhappy endings and I had a fair share of sad and bad experiences while on the road. But in the end, I only focus on things that matter to me. The bad experiences happened to teach me lessons in life. I let go of this illusion that people are here to make me happy, it's not like that. I learned how to be happy on my own, and be happier when there's a good company. But I try to be a complete person, I try because I'm still a work in progress.
Thanks for your words.