Happiness is not a god
How toxic positivity destroys lives
We project onto others through the usage of social media our envisioned lifestyles. Hustle culture is the new rage. Flex culture dictates to some of us our humanely value as human beings, tying self-worth to materialism and consumerism. And I ask this question: to what is true everlasting joy in a world so preoccupied with living the American dream that we exchange chasing after a dream for living in the real world and building true sustainable happiness? Why is happiness these days mostly considered a commodity, something that you have to work for, when simply it is something that you have inside you? I don’t know to you, but to me, if I can envision it in my mind, happiness today is like a drug being sold off of the black market, and many of us are addicted to it, or it seems rather that we are addicted to toxic positivity, the promotion that we must be, on a consistent basis, happy, lest we actually be human, at least for one moment, we disturb the peace and the balance and the joy within our lives, if we dare to be angry, be sad, or God forbid, any sort of human emotion aside from joy.
Our modern day version of happiness seems to be equated with the aesthetic of how our life appears than what it truly is. We want others to believe what we project onto them, that endless non-stop schedules of work surrounding fitness, wearing expensive watches, driving fast cars, and buying a new home is all presented to be our true sustainable joy in life, and don’t get me wrong, if you’ve worked hard enough to get to that place, feel free to be happy, but it all appears hollow, in the end, if that’s all that you truly have to prove your “happiness.” Happiness is not the proof in the pudding. It is the pudding; it is the “being”, so to speak. It is finding joy in the little things, the tedious things, and the big things, everything. Count it all joy, my brothers, for what the good book says. There is so much meaning in just that one particular phrase, that one particular sentencing. Everything in this life, no matter how arduous it seems in climbing to the top, or how vexing it appears to be when running in the race, all of it, the steps towards the climb, the steps towards the race are all necessary, needed to happen, to refine our character, building our strength from tragedy, from defeat, so that we can become overcomers and that, in everything, it is all counted joy. True joy, true happiness is found in God. You can find happiness in doing the things that you sincerely love to do, not to live a life that you think that you need to live, from society’s standpoint.
So to complete this article I’m about to section it off into two parts, part one and part two. I’m about to drop some dimes onto you. And, if it’s not dimes to you, it’s dimes to me. Take it as you will but I hope this can be helpful for you, so you can truly find the meaningful joy in everything, but allow yourself to also be human and feel.
Pt. 1 Happiness is not a pursuit
Do you remember that 2006 movie, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” starring Will smith, and his son, Jaden smith? Well this was a staple of my childhood, but I always found the title to be curious. The pursuit of happiness?-It begged for me to ask the question of, “Is happiness something to be pursued?” We aren’t taught to pursue sadness, or anger, so why are we taught, out of all emotions, to pursue happiness? Maybe it’s the fact that as long as we’re happy, we aren’t nearly as productive. Yep, I said it, and maybe you’re thinking that I’m overreaching, but think about it. What makes art so great, or great works of literature, or any prose of art in the world? It’s not happy art; I can ensure you of that. Its art in all its degrees of the artist’s feelings and passion intertwined. Many of us don’t grow from happiness, we tend to stay stagnant. Think of it as this: if you’re constantly happy, what need would you have to do anything else? Even many of us who promote flex culture as our happiness aren’t truly nearly as happy as we come across as. We’re actually tired, exhausted even, from all the constant work behind the scenes, beneath the glitz and glamour that nobody else sees. So we don’t get somewhere from just being happy. We get there from pain, from loss, from willpower, from hope, but most importantly, with faith.
That isn’t to say that you cannot be productive while being joyful about it, but, if you’re always in a state of happiness, of continuous, albeit toxic, positivity, then where is the strength needed, pulled mostly from our tragedies, in order to succeed and get ahead in life? You see where I’m going here; so many of us today are buying into this bull of affirmations, manifestation, new age occult stuff that mainly is geared towards ourselves and our success. Our success is the only thing that matters. People who don’t bring us joy deserve to be cut off. The list goes on and on into things for us to do to “manifest our desired lives.”
This is what comes with the price tag on happiness, which is mainly about you. You are the star, you solely deserve to shine, but, everything is geared towards loving yourself, making yourself the only thing, the only priority in your life, and that just simply is not true.
The world is becoming more and more like the treehouse of horror episode of the Simpsons, when Ned Flanders reigned supreme over the world and forced everyone to smile during the initiation process into his kingdom; to be good, productive, advantageous diddly, doodily citizens of Flander’s world.
We’re being sold a propagandizing lie, seeking to mold us into a design of society’s viewpoint of what wealth, worth and happiness should look like. Never would society think to ask us what we truly want out of this life, lest it deter from society’s narrative.
It must be assumed then, from societal narrative, that you’re not living a full life lest you have all the staples of an American dream life, like it were Barbie’s playhouse, with the brand new shiny Mercedes, a speed boat that you hardly may use, and a big fanciful mansion. Should you have all these things, you must be really rich, but are you living a truly enriching life, is the question.
You don’t need manifestation, affirmations, etc., in order to live a good life. We are being coddled, taught to override all the bad stuff that this life has to offer us, for the sake of being perpetually joyful, always hustling towards the next big thing, told time and time to worthlessly work towards nothing, while it being considered, under a guise, that we’re working towards everything: the dream life with the dream car, the dream house with the dream family, the boat, the money, the job. All of it fanciful rich talk, that life is well built and lived through consumerism and how much that you own, but not how much that your soul owns. How much pieces of your soul do you have to lose in order to gain meaningless stuff that you can’t take with you when you die anyways? Seems like a very bad trade off if you ask me. In order to “live” and “be happy” you have to give the most precious thing that you have, that is not limited to just this life alone, for simply to acquire things that mean nothing, that rust and get dusty all the same. Why is happiness now a pursuit towards acquiring stuff?-Does this really show how depressed we are as a nation, albeit globally, as a population?
What I love and appreciate about the phrase, count it all joy, is that I am not enforcing my will upon the world to appease my self-aggrandizing egotistical want for happiness. I am simply rolling with the punches, allowing myself to cry a little, scream into a pillow every now and then, and still wake up with joy in the morning that God has blessed me with. Manifesting, affirmations, teaches you to enforce your will upon the world, redirecting life to bend to your will in order to change the way that life is and make it what you want it to be; and then what? Will you still be happy, or constantly in the pursuit of it?-because the pursuit of happiness isn’t really happiness. In order to “be happy” in the worldly sense, one must constantly be in search of it. There’s no moment of peace.
Pt. 2 The problematic issue with flex culture
So I’m not writing this for the sake of wokeism. I’m not a “wokeist” cult member, I’m just aware, aware to the bullcrap that’s called flex culture, and all the bread and crumbs that are being thrown at us, and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want bread and crumbs.
I want you to think of the capitalist system. The little people such as you and me are on the bottom, and then you have the rich jerks who eat for you, the enforcers who enforce the laws kept in place to manage us, and those on top, who profit off of most of the world’s population, like cattle being raised and profited off of. You see, flex culture, at least to me, is the promotion of all things wrong with our capitalist society. Though I am not a communist, nor, in any case, a highly political person, nor do I need to be to assert this, but there is something wrong, a plague of sorts, with bamboozling the populace with the promotion that from “rags to riches” all your dreams will come true, when that simply, is not the case.
Maybe Cinderella didn’t need, after all, a big castle and a handsome prince. Maybe she just needed a better family, a supportive loving mother and sisters and the support of her father. Nobody seemed to talk about that. Just give her a prince, a castle, and it all should be fine.
The very same people that “flex” on you are the very same people that make a profit off of you. Can’t we just live in a society where everyone is equal, on an economical status, and no one is considered poor nor rich? That everyone can just be, and a man is judged by the character of his heart and soul and not by how much bank that is stored in his pockets? Ah, good days, but I’m just an idealist.
The point is that flex culture is the hyped up dream, usually seen as an alternative to escaping what we call “wage slavery”, born from the once monarchy driven society that we once lived in, in exchange for now big corporations that serve as overlords, and the small little people receive a very tiny piece of the money pie when they are 99% of the bulk majority work that goes into running the business. What is Walmart without its workers?-Just a name, right?
So I feel that flex culture takes advantage of our wants and desires. Many of us, if not most of us, want to escape having to work a 9 to 5 job that requires most of our time and our energy for most of the day just to simply live. But flex culture teaches us that if we work even harder, we’ll soon get to where we want to be, and here is the deceitful lie: they need you to believe in that pipe dream to get you to work harder, so they can make more money, while you’re in an endless battle to get to that place with the fast cars and money, when most people never seem to reach that point. The sad part is, instead of “flex culture” why aren’t we being shown a more realistic goal? Why is it pandered to us that everyone’s big dream is to simply flex how much money that they have, or how big of a house that they live in? Why can’t it be that somebody’s dream is to be able to watch their kids grow up, or save just enough money to be able to live off-grid, so they won’t have to worry, at least not as much as they used to, about slaving away for a corporation who is willing to make a huge profit off of you, but sell you so little of the American dream, the very same dream that lives in flex culture, the very same dream that millions die for.
Life is not about flexing what you have for clout, to prove some illusionary worldly worth and status, because it doesn’t mean anything, especially not to people that really could care less how much money you have. If you want to flex fine, but don’t take advantage of people’s minds by telling them if you just work hard enough at that job you hate, you’ll get to where you’re at, when their already tired and exhausted. Many of us working class folk are exhausted, and flex culture is just simply a shiny bill tied to a rope, flashed before our very eyes to keep us motivated into an endless cycle of work and tiredness that does nothing more but fuel this very toxic value system of measuring self-worth and value towards people who have more, and those that have little. But the little you have can actually be the most that you need.
Value & happiness is not tied to how much that we can accumulate. Why can’t our greatest supposed flex be how we can contribute to making life better for others, and ourselves?
