
Emotions are overrated
Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That’s it. They’re feedback mechanisms telling us that something is either likely right or likely wrong for us — nothing more, nothing less.
Emotions are just signals. They are merely just indicators that tell us that we have to do something about an unsolved problem. It is just your brain telling you that something should be done but it isn’t. For instance, when you are feeling anxious about something, it means that you want to do something about it, no matter if you are capable or not. Taking something more severe like a childhood trauma, that particular incident that spooks you every time when you think about it, I would say that it is something unaddressed, you wanted to do something about it, but you were helpless. When you feel negative emotions, it is because you are supposed to do something. On the other hand, you feel positive emotions when you have made the right choice.
Given what is said, I would say that it is completely immature for people to prioritize their emotions over anything else. “ Oh I am so sorry that I did/said whatever because I was so mad.” Sounds familiar right, at some point in your life, you have definitely said it or heard it. “ Oh i did this just because it felt right.” Letting your emotions drive your actions would only lead to irrational decisions, I believe that everyone knows that. However, think about it, you always blame your emotions when you have made the wrong decision. Emotions are not an excuse, you are just demonstrating how unreliable you are, how handicapped you are when it comes to handling emotions. Only kids and animals live their lives fully based on emotions, but nobody would like a wailing adult just because he or she “can’t even”. People always complain about how the world doesn’t tolerate emotions, how we must learn how to repress our negative emotions as we grow up. There are countless social awkward situations caused by someone’s reckless emotions, how many injuries or incidents that could be avoided if one could have just chilled. Compared to children, adults are capable of causing much more harm when being irrational, they don’t just shit on the carpet like infants do. When an individual is able to deny their negative emotions, it means that they are in fact trying to find a way out. When I say “deny”, I don’t mean “not admitting” that they are feeling depressed. What the book meant was to deny the feedback mechanisms brought about by negative emotions (crashing car windows, throwing things across of the room etc…).
Humans are insatiable, what satisfies you today will no longer make you feel content tomorrow, what makes us feel good today will make us feel bad tomorrow. The things you get today will be the shit you have to deal with tomorrow. The dream job you get will be the job you struggle with for the next few decades, the perfect partner you found will be the faults of the same person you have to deal with later on. There are always sacrifices we have to make before or after we achieve our goals. It is human kind’s fantasy that we can reach ultimate happiness in our life, but no, we can only taste bits and pieces of it throughout our lives.
Are our lives really that miserable ?
Now you get the point that there is in fact no way for us to reach a goal named “happiness”. However, does it mean that we are being deprived of the rights to be able to feel it? *drumrolls* Fortunately, we are indeed able to be happy, but not for the rest of our lives. We have always been stuck in a loop, with successive positive and negative emotions. The only thing we can do now is to fully utilized the nature of this loop and to maximize the content of positive emotions.
Last time I talked about why not to try to pursue happiness. As expected, doubts are received. This is why it leads to the second chapter of this book, what leads to happiness?
We always hear the phrase, “never ending life problems”, we always complain about it, yet we were all too shallow to realize the true meaning behind it. Let me just shatter your dreams and tell you that everyone must suffer, yes you heard me, everyone, MUST suffer. However, you are left with a choice, what kind of suffering do you want? We must all choose our own life problems, it is because, this, is the key to happiness. We always end up in an endless spiral of problems. For instance, we keep worrying about our future, but when you think about it, every time we reach a milestone, it sparks joy. Life is all about solving problems, pathetic right? But the secret recipe to happiness is the solving part. The entire humanity wants wealth, but nobody wants to work, the entire humanity wants to be in shape, but no one wants to spend those agonizing hours in the gym, the entire humanity wants to have the perfect relationship, but no one wants to spend long hours figuring out how the two of you can work things out. This is the filthy and brutal truth of humanity, the unwillingness to sacrifice, is running in our veins. It is norm that whenever people are asked about what is happiness, they automatically think about the outcome, they compare, and they get miserable. It is in human nature that we often neglect the ugly truth. Of course, I am talking about things that we are not born with.
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress — the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
The answer is simple right? It is completely in out own hands to choose what kind of problems do we want to solve in our lifetime. We could reach happiness by solving the kind of problems we want to solve. This is how you define happiness, at least this is what I thought. Instead of giving a literal meaning to the word happiness, we should see it as a painful process, but of your own choice.
