Whether the good doctor means more time happy, more intense happiness, or more people happy, we all agree that the expansion of happiness is certainly one purpose of our life.

The good doctor neglected to mention, however, the conflicting reality of life. Providing both exultant happiness and deep, deep lows, life “sends” to many a confusing message. We are after all, wired for pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. Creating for some, unrealistic expectations and many disappointments. And no clear way to happiness.

Since we can be happy, some therefore think we are “supposed to always be happy.” While for others happiness is a sick joke. Life sucks, don’t expect more. So which is it? Are we destined for happiness or misery or some of both? And do we have any say in the matter?

Life definitely gives us much to be happy about. Glorious sunrises and dazzling sunsets, newborn babies and cute puppies, first love and lasting love, deep and satisfying relationships, illuminating discoveries and clarifying insights, hits the spot food and thirst quenching water – we could go on forever.

Life brings so much joy and opportunity for sustained happiness, it is not surprising that some consider permanent happiness to be our natural state.But life after all is also a big reason why so many are unhappy. Both the reality of our existence and the life we lead within that reality contain huge obstacles to happiness and the regular conditions for sadness and joy.

Life Is Relentless Taskmaster

Life after all was not engineered to be easy, fun, or to provide us with regular happiness. Those are modern human expectations, inconceivable to most ancestors and all other forms of life. Recall that of the billions of species that ever existed, 99.99% are extinct. Our blessed earth flourishes with life and extinguishes every form of life.

That’s because life is a relentless struggle for our daily bread and for survival. A struggle to continuously adapt to the unchanging change of reality. A struggle that all will ultimately lose. Life, also recall, only lives by consuming other life. Predators devour prey, herbivores munch on plants, parasites and diseases live on their hosts, and plants live on the recycled energy of other decomposed plant life. We are all some sort of predator and prey.

Yet earth can also be accurately described as a “garden of eden.” It’s located in a “Goldilocks Zone” of our solar system: far enough from the sun that it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water – the essential ingredient of life. It gets constant energy from the sun, but is protected from too much sun (which would destroy life with its radiation) by a magnetic belt. Life flourishes nearly everywhere, occupying successfully almost every environment. Nor can we overlook its awesome beauty.

As beautifully as it currently suits us (we are seven billion and growing after all), it was not created just for us. Raised in a faith that teaches “God made the earth for us,” even without science contradicting this view, it’s hard to believe. Reality is demanding and difficult. Everyone everywhere struggles with ever present frustrations, disappointments, setbacks, and problems.

So rather than being a perfect paradisiacal home designed for us, where our needs are all effortlessly met, life on earth can be a veil of tears. Any happiness we enjoy, can be fortuitous or earned but requires an exquisite and continuous adjustment to life’s facts. We don’t merely desire, pursue, and enjoy happiness in a vacuum, we must achieve it under the pervasive conditions that constantly challenge our well being and survival: disease, illness, the deaths of loved ones, the loss of what we need, temperature extremes, insufficient sustenance, old age if we are lucky, and always unchanging change.

Very little of our lives is under much if any control by us. We are truly at the mercy of conditions and the trials, tribulations and opportunities they bring to us.

And A Generous Provider

So if you are feeling happy congratulations! Proving that, as the Buddhists say, “while life is suffering, we can still be happy.”

The possibility of happiness is not in question, we see and feel examples daily. The questions is how can we attain and maintain some level of happiness? How can we be happy in a world that both sustains and destroys us? How can we be happy in a world that provides and denies us, satisfies and obstructs our wishes, desires and needs? How can we be happy when the essence of our very nature is both the capacity for happiness and joy and the initiate reflex of pain?

Realizing that we create some our own unhappiness by expecting the world to be very different than it actually is, by being in conflict with life’s reality is a good place to start. Realizing that disappointment, pain, frustration and dissatisfaction are the contributions that we make to our own unhappiness is the next step. Life gives us the material of existence. It is up to us to decide what we make of it. So we do have some control-mainly over how we FEEL.

To be happy we must understand both how we make ourselves unhappy and how we can feel happiness.

There are many many reasons people feel unhappy. Some of the more obvious:

  • A loved one has recently passed.
  • We’ve lost a good job or suffered some other financial set back.
  • We are alone and lonely.
  • We are in ill health and in pain……and on and on…..

Each of these examples and most we could offer involve some loss, some setback, some disturbance to our preferred way of life. Often these setbacks leave us “cheated,” “treated unfairly.” We feel that we’ve worked hard to create a way of life and it’s been unfairly disrupted. “Life is hard already,” we think. “Why make it harder for me? This is not the way it’s supposed to be!”

This notion of “how things are supposed to be” is the source of much conflict with reality and unhappiness.

And there are many reasons for people to feel happy:

  • A loved one has recovered from a life threatening illness.
  • We’ve found a better job and enjoyed some financial advance.
  • We feel surrounded by loving friends and family.
  • We’re in great health….and on and on…

Essentially we are happy when life is going well, not perfect, but well. When we feel that we are more or less on top of things and there are no big problems. And we are unhappy when the overall trend of our life is going “down hill”, going in the opposite direction of our desires.

The conditions of life do have an impact on our happiness. And often we have little or no control over what life hands us. Sometimes no control at all. But that does not mean we have no say at all in our happiness. That’s because the conditions of our life alone doesn’t totally determine our happiness.

How we “see” those conditions is the key determinant of our happiness.

Let’s apply these ideas to one of the worst situations: “A dear friend has passed, how am I supposed to ‘see’ that? It’s ridiculous to think I could somehow ‘see’ it in a way that makes me happy!”

Agreed! No perception is likely to turn the death of a dear friend into a source of happiness. But our perceptions can make it feel worse and even a bit better.

You know that with time life will look different, look better, and you’ll feel better. That’s because as time passes you will focus less on the loss and more on the positives of our existence. So we can wait to feel better.

Or we can accelerate our recovery by reviewing the MEANING of the loss has for us..

You have not only lost a dear friend, things have changed. Things you unconsciously counted on to remain the same. You can no longer get together to….. and that’s another loss, more meaning.

And more importantly perhaps you are thinking “this is wrong! This shouldn’t be happening…they were so young.” And “life will never be the same…. Life will never ever be good again.”

If that’s the case, we more deeply understand the meaning of your loss and the depths of your unhappiness. And we can begin to see some possibilities for some return of good feeling.

We are not suggesting here that we twist reality. It would be ridiculous to assert “my friend is dead, that makes me happy,” because it doesn’t make you happy. It’s tragic and very upsetting, there is nothing happy about it. Nor would it help to deny their passing.

So what could one possibly do to restore happiness after such an irreversible loss. “What view, what perception of this event, could make me feel better? This is totally out of my control.”

Not totally. The death is totally out of our control. How we feel about it is not. It’s not easy to regain control of our feelings and feel better. But it can be done. Maybe not enabling us to feel immediately happy again. But continuously throughout your life, you’ve recovered from setbacks and restored happiness after pain and loss.

ASK: Is it really true that your life will never be good again? Different yes but “never good again”? Really? Your challenge is to see how you are to make your life good in a different way. Maybe never as good as it was with your friend, but good, nonetheless.

To recap for today: We are innately able to feel happiness…..and pain. Conditions out of our control can influence which one we feel. AND a condition IN our control also influences our experience: our VIEW of the situation. If we fight reality and insist that “this is not how it should be”, we’ll lose and be unhappy.

Life was not custom made to meet our personal needs. But our ability to “see” things differently is a SKILL vital to adapting happily to a currently unhappy reality. Rather than battling reality and expecting IT to accommodate us, WE can accommodate ourselves-and in turn feel better. Maybe even happy! More, next time.

Our purpose here will be to expand your happiness by better understanding its nature and nurture.

Regular readers may wonder why the change in focus from relationships to happiness? Actually, happiness has always been our topic-whether through improving relationships or by our adaptation to life.

Written by Tony Johnson is a retired university mental health center psychologist. He has lived, learned and enlarged his happiness in the Costa Ballena for over three years. He has the curiosity of a coati about all things life! These articles are his best shot at answering those “Life Questions”. Hopefully, you will find them informative and useful.

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