Things going well is your misguided concept of happiness

It satisfies the rapacious, quantifiable, scorecard idea of success

It also aligns with those rare memories when all things went so well — and for a moment you felt so happy

 

Except it’s misleading

 

Happiness is the natural state

It can be ruined, yes

But as long as the major factors causing unhappiness are removed — piling up happiness-giving factors doesn’t make much difference

It gives an illusion of a difference

It gives you temporary high

Sniffing coke makes you happy too… for 30 minutes

High doesn’t make you happy, happy is the natural state

More doesn’t make you happy, it lifts you higher for 30 minutes, or maybe even 3 days, or 3 weeks,

then you’re back to your default state

which should be happiness

 

OF COURSE you will feel happy when EVERYTHING ALIGNS beautifully

Of course certain period of your life will be characterised by everything going AS WELL as ever, and better

Maybe it all felt so good that you were EVEN distracted from your usual NEUROSIS

For a moment you felt so good that you almost felt complete

 

And what will happen now, if you’re lazy, is you’ll use this memory as a model of what “HAPPINESS” is,

alas it’s not

it was just an arbitrary scorecard, that you had at a time, that happened to fill up

 

Indeed, memories mislead you

Almost any memory is happy in its own nostalgic way

You look at the bright side of it, and then experience only that bright emotion

Obviously as you’re experiencing it, that good emotion — it feels good. That’s how good emotions work

And obviously this is not how that period in your life necessarily felt like, day to day

It has its highs, but the rest of it felt… just like normal life

It was not oversaturated with nothing but this positive emotion that you are now invoking when thinking back to that time

 

It sounds trite, “live in the moment”, “happiness is now”

But I will be writing about it for as long as it is necessary

It must be a reminder every day

Because we accumulate NEW goals, NEW ambitions

and we accumulate new MEMORIES, new NOSTALGIAS,

and forget to LIVE NOW,

 

You should realise all of those glorious goals. Gotta do something in this long life anyway

Doing things is a pretext to LIVE, and LIVING is what produces happiness

But it’s mostly a pretext, it’s not a precondition

The living happens right now, and that’s where happiness occurs

Likewise wonderful moments and inspirations — they should inspire you indeed, inspire you to explore

And as you do — give your utmost attention

You don’t want to miss anything

That’s where happiness occurs