The Pursuit of Happiness Is Bullshit
I'm going to let you in on a little secret...
I'm not that happy.
Everything feels pretty bland and gray.
There isn't anything significantly wrong with my life - I'm healthy, safe, and doing cool stuff regularly.
I'm just not that inspired by it.
I've been in this scenario enough times to understand I'm on the precipice of a massive personal shift.
Whenever I hit these low points - overwhelmed with a mix of grief, boredom, lethargy, and anxiety - something tends to come out of left field and shake things up.
When traversing these peaks and valleys, I'm reminded that happiness is a poor metric to measure the quality of my life.
Emotions are fleeting.
Some days we wake up ecstatic and excited to be alive, while on others, we hardly want to get out of bed, despite nothing changing.
We're still going to the same job.
There's still food in the fridge.
We still have all our limbs.
I don't believe in the pursuit of happiness.
We will never capture happiness, just like we cannot capture a cloud floating in the sky.
These things are too ethereal, too fleeting to be contained.
Happiness is not an end in itself - it's a byproduct of living a meaningful life.
When I feel unhappy, the tendency is to do things that have brought me joy previously.
When these old strategies no longer work, I blame myself.
There must be something wrong with me.
I must be depressed. I need help. I need to fix this so I can be as I was before.
But trying to move forward by looking backward has never worked for me.
As much as I desire to return to that nostalgic time where everything was pleasant and beautiful, I'm a different person, and the world is a different place.
So what do I do instead?
How do I learn to be with the gray, monotone season of my life without letting it consume and destroy me completely?
Here's what I've been experimenting with lately...
Doing Nothing
I hate doing nothing.
It forces me to be with whatever is alive in my consciousness, which is typically absolute chaos.
Plus, it isn't even productive.
I'd much rather create an Instagram post or do "business" research on YouTube.
At least then I'm doing stuff.
But lately, I've noticed doing more stuff to avoid feeling is becoming harder and harder.
The day ends with my brain friend, and regardless of how much I accomplish, I feel even worse than before.
Lately, when I notice I'm doing stuff to avoid feeling, I force myself to just sit there instead.
Sometimes nothing happens, and I zone out lost in thought.
But frequently, some big emotion comes up.
I yell.
I cry.
I moan.
I bang my fists against my desk in anger.
There's no story.
No particular thing that I'm grieving over.
I'm just letting the energy in my body run its course.
Free of judgment or self-ridicule.
Like the clouds, I don't attempt to capture it or dissect it.
I let it wash over my body and move out of my system.
This takes practice.
It took me years to allow myself to break down for no particular reason, at any given time.
These moments are like Drano for the soul.
My emotional pipes are clogged up with the inevitable gunk that accumulates during life.
The more crap I shove down the pipes, the more backed up my whole system becomes, until I'm overflowing with nasty stuff seeping into the rest of my life.
Then I have to hire a spiritual plumber (and those dudes are expensive).
Better I just keep the pipes clean with regular maintenance.
Getting Choked Out Daily
I've been experimenting with getting choked out daily.
Not in the bedroom...
After a 17-year hiatus, I've picked up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again.
For three or four days a week, I spend a few hours getting tossed, twisted, choked, and bent out of shape by a bunch of sweaty killers.
I've noticed that after every session, no matter how many times I get defeated (hint: it's a lot), I feel more alive than at any other time of my day.
I've come to realize that practicing something new, especially if it's extremely physically and intellectually demanding, is temporarily interrupting the torment of my mental loops.
Most people are stuck in the same four or five thoughts all day long.
The exact same stuff, over and over again.
These loops inform our behavior, the choices we make, and the way our life turns out.
But when I'm rolling on the mat, my thought loops are sent on vacation.
The learning curve is so extreme in Jiu-Jitsu; I literally can't focus on anything else.
100% of my attention is committed to not getting killed.
If I started Jiu-Jitsu to feel happy, I would quit within the first few minutes.
Rolling is deeply rewarding, but it's not joyful or fun.
Most of the time, I am in physical pain, exhausted, claustrophobic, and in a fight-or-flight state.
If I felt this way in any other scenario, I would assume I was dying.
Yet each time I go to the gym, I learn another strategy, get stronger, more comfortable with the intensity, and leave a little less beat up.
Undertaking something extremely hard and seeing improvement is deeply meaningful.
With each unit of effort I put in, there is a tangible result that is directly and immediately measurable.
This makes it a nourishing and enjoyable pursuit.
Yet no matter how much Jiu-Jitsu I do, the circumstances of the rest of my life remain the same.
It isn't solving my unhappiness.
It isn't changing my relationships with myself or outlook on the world.
Jiu-Jitsu is always the same, regardless of how I feel.
Yet the pursuit of meaning is always available, regardless of whatever my current emotional state happens to be.
Too many people believe once they're emotionally ready, or healed, or have their life figured out, then they can take on new challenges.
This is backward.
Facing challenges is what shifts our emotions, heals us, and ultimately makes our life more beautiful and worthwhile.
Being Unapologetically Honest
Don't ask me how I'm doing if you don't want an honest answer.
I've given up on telling people I'm doing well when I'm not.
There is a freedom in calling it like it is.
Not in a weird, over-indulgent way where you spill your entire life story to strangers (don't do that).
But I've dropped the facade of being all good, even in conversation with a stranger.
I've noticed an incredible amount of freedom when I stop trying to put on some persona.
If I'm not good, or I'm doing okay, why would I say I'm doing good, or great?
The only person I'm lying to is myself - other people know you're full of crap when you look miserable and contracted, yet you respond with "good."
The other day at the gym, someone asked how I was, and I said, "I'm not great, but I'm alive."
That response opened a much deeper dialogue where both of us shared honestly about where we're at and what we were struggling with.
That would have never been possible if I just replied, "Good."
I brought more truth into the space, and that allowed others to be more honest with themselves.
Radical honesty fosters authentic connection.
This creates more presence with ourselves and each other, which is ultimately what we all desire.
Speaking to what's true is a gift to others.
I used to believe I was a burden by sharing anything other than positivity, but all this did was keep me closed off and hidden from the world and only amplified my experience of isolation.
Taking the risk that being honest requires is so refreshing in a world where our automated, synthetic responses leave little room for humanity.
Final Thoughts
The Western ethos is to eradicate mental discomfort the moment it arises through any combination of pills, powders, and potions.
This makes sense you build an entire empire on the “pursuit of happiness” - any divergence from that will be pathologized and rectified accordingly.
This approach is guaranteed disaster.
Unhappiness is no worse than happiness.
Grief no worse than joy.
Emotions don’t live in the paradigm of good/bad or wrong/right.
They’re only emotions, and your best bet is to learn how to be with all of them.
If you want guarantee a life of unhappiness, continue to chase happiness.
If you want a life rich in depth and experience, then pursue the meaningful.
Practice Amor Fati - fall in love with your fate.
The good, the bad, the ugly and the difficult.
Because, as Nietzsche says, to embrace any part of life necessitates that you embrace all of it.