Our Definition of Happiness is Profoundly Fucked Up

Here’s how to fix it

If I have to share a really good story today, perhaps I should point out that last night I reminded myself what happiness means to me, personally. I don’t believe in the modern myth about that elusive state of carefree existence we’re constantly fed from every possible corner.

Seriously, you can’t buy a pack of cigarettes without an attached promise of profound satisfaction. This is pathetic. Our notion of happiness is ridiculously subjective and poisonous. It’s as if we all conspire to maintain it as an unattainable ideal, probably knowing subconsciously that making an ideal real is counterproductive.

Let’s say one day you manage to experience true happiness, exactly as the modern mythology requires. What will be your next move?

It’s like trying to picture yourself at the edge of the Universe. Even if you could, what would happen if you throw a stone in the nothingness that lies ahead? Or simply stretch your hand? You’ll move the line. You’ll extend the border. You would create something out of nothing and the universe would expand once again. And then what will happen to the edge you were standing on? It will become a center. Same with happiness. And everything ideal. Everything extreme.

So why would you chase an impossible moment? Life, like everything else in this Universe, is a complex mess of different ingredients. Some feel right and taste good. Others are bitter and repulsive. And here’s the catch: Life is all this, bundled together. You cannot separate them.

If I can’t stand the doctrines of Christianity, it is precisely because they fail to acknowledge this complexity of the Universe. It’s not about some fight between good and bad. It’s not about something profoundly perfect that was damaged by accident or by some wicked intellect. Such thinking limits our understanding about right and wrong locked in the prism of our own egoism.

Hoping that one day we will exhale and end up in perpetual bliss is a sign of ignorance about the very nature of everything that surrounds us. Accepting that bad stuff is also part of the world we are living in doesn’t mean bowing our heads to misfortune. It means being able to recognize the good stuff that happens to us while we are fighting to solve real problems.

If we adopt an absolutist approach to life and we stare at the universe thinking only of the problems it throws at us — be they personal struggles or threats of cosmic proportions, we miss noticing its perpetual glory. And that’s sad. Because this glory doesn’t disappear when our hearts are suffocated by bad thoughts. And the failure to pay attention is solely ours. That’s what happiness means to me. A simple recognition that there’s always something beautiful within my reach that I can choose to access whenever I need it.

But I don’t have to get too abstract to describe it. I’m absolutely sure that in everybody’s life there’s something or someone tangible, made from sparkling decaying matter, that brings more joy than sorrow. Why postpone its recognition while we chase a moment we know would never come?