About happiness

Once, I have been chasing happiness.

But what is happiness? The answer is different for everyone.

If you look up the definition on the Internet, you will most likely find that happiness means pleasure, joy. That's an indescribably subtle difference from what I understand and feel about the happiness of this generation.

When I was young, I had a strong sense of emptiness. There was even a period when I was very secluded. Not only did I not like to talk to people, but I took it as a pleasure to not talk, and only said what was most necessary. At the end of the day, I would count the few words I said today.

At that time, I never had the idea of pursuing happiness. Just put what you think in your mind and write it down in a diary.

When I entered university, I found some like-minded people who were willing to actively develop interpersonal relationships and pursue happiness. I lost myself from several romances, tried my best to burn myself out in college life, avoided loneliness in various interpersonal relationships, and forgot my loneliness.

Ball said: Happiness is the guide. I listened to this sentence and set off on the path where I was most likely to feel happy. So I threw myself into the world to wander.

When I was alone on the road, I had a conversation with myself, and it seemed that I gradually remembered something important, and I began to write down some thoughts and record what happened around me. At that time, I was indeed happier than when I was in Taiwan.

Unfortunately, what I could feel in my heart at that time was still extremely limited. When travel became a daily routine, my heart gradually couldn’t digest it. Travel often changed drastically, and the happiness I could feel every day gradually decreased as time went on. . I started to feel lost again, wondering if my original choice was still a mistake.

A year and a half later, I returned to Taiwan and resumed my old working life. A life with little change. And when the familiar becomes unfamiliar, it also becomes new. It turns out that anything in the past has never been taken for granted.

When I was in my thirties, I gradually realized that the happiness I had been chasing in the past seemed to be more radical. To put it more succinctly and crudely, it is almost like an orgasm. No matter how different the pain or joy the chasing gesture was, it was enough for me, who had fallen into a sense of nothingness, to perceive my own existence through that extreme feeling, and to remember that I was still breathing.

And why pursue such radical joy? It is nothing more than wanting to escape the pain in the heart, while immersing in happiness, so as to forget the existence of pain. Just as alcohol numbs the brain, drugs induce sleep.

"You can't survive without being obsessed with something. All people are slaves to something." I think of Kenny Ackerman.

I realized that achieving so-called more happiness is more difficult than I imagined. In other words, because we understand happiness as what we need to achieve, it becomes so difficult to achieve happiness itself.

But what if happiness already exists? We can enjoy food and experience life, and even if it is inevitable that we will face a job that we are not satisfied with day after day, most of us can still retain a certain degree of freedom. Every thing we take for granted, in other times and times, it is difficult to have such a day that we can feel boring. Just that, is actually a great happiness.

I finally understand that the essence of happiness is just a fleeting joy, not a long-lasting state. If you want to pursue more happiness, or even use any means to achieve your goal, you will only be in vain and cause a heavy burden on your body and mind.

So I started looking for answers other than "pursuing happiness". I started exercising seriously, spending as much time as possible reading and meditating during my commute. Even though I'm making the most of my time (and trying not to feel busy), I don't feel any great joy in my life right now. More often it is just plain, occasionally a little happy and a little calm.

It became clear to me that with these established habits, I was able to find a balance and try to maintain my current life. And that sense of nothingness has not disappeared, it is still in a corner of my heart. But I don't have to escape it anymore.

I also don't have to chase happiness anymore.