What’s Wrong with The Pursuit of Happiness
It is written within The United States Declaration of Independence. We all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Sounds pretty good.
But, ironically, there’s incredible misery within this right. When you look deeper at it, it’s actually a good marketing scheme. The model is quite simple. Happiness is something to be pursued, but rarely achieved. It’s ever so elusive, on the other side of buying that product, becoming that thing, and achieving that goal.
Society moves people through the life cycle, more or less like a conveyor belt that we are all so familiar with. Go to school, get good grades so you can go to good university, then get a good job, make good money, get married, have kids, grow older, and then die — one thing leading to the next. You have a right to pursue these things, because these things will make you happy. Got it.
Well, what happens when you get these things — when you achieve what you aimed to do — and still you aren’t happy? This happens quite frequently and it can feel like a rip off, wait a second, I pursued happiness and I still feel empty, like something is missing. What the heck?!
We are unhappy because we are striving for the evasive happiness of tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and…it looks quite like yesterday. Today predicts tomorrow. Unhappy today, unhappy tomorrow.
It’s true, something is missing. The declaration of independence, along with the rhythm of mainstream society, leads us astray. Never did they promise happiness, only the pursuit of it.
Acknowledge the losing formula. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism can help explain — life is full of suffering and desire creates this suffering. So, we strive for happiness but only find suffering in that pursuit.
But this is OK, this is something to embrace, because without suffering there would be no happiness. Out of suffering, the seeds of wellbeing are planted.
If desire = suffering, the The Pursuit of Happiness can actually be understood as the Suffering of Happiness. This seems to be the biggest sickness that has permeated throughout American culture and it is a sickness that is well-exploited for tremendous profit. But there’s hope.
Once you accept the model as miserable and backwards, happiness suddenly becomes more attainable. The Promise of the Declaration of Independence should be reconsidered. If you want happiness, you should think about it this way — The Happiness of Pursuit, or in other words, The Happiness of Suffering.
Yes, this makes much more sense. This suffering is something that we can all relate to, because it is what makes humans, human. We suffer and we share that suffering. To not acknowledge, appreciate, or accept this is a bit MENTAL.
MENTAL — yes, this is what we are working on at Dork Dancing, reducing MENTAL Health stigma. We all are suffering and are in pain. When we can become self-aware and acknowledge this pain and then learn to appreciate it — well, the game changes.
There’s loads of stigma around mental health because it is perceived as weakness, but when we identify with such misperceived weakness, we suddenly give ourselves capacity to gain real strength. Acknowledging the problem is the only way to start improving upon it. But remember, the problem is never solved, it’s one of the ironies and miseries of life. All that we can do is try — pursue.
How do you pursue? This is the question. Do you suffer for happiness or do you happily suffer? It makes a difference. It’s kind of a big shortcut. Maybe the kind of shortcut you are looking for. Let’s dance?