LTMS: On Happiness

In this edition of "Letters to my Son", I advise him on how to be happy.

Or, at minimum, describe the stuff I've tried to do to be happy that is entirely counterproductive.

Before I talk about achieving happiness, I'd like to give some lip service to its apparent opposite, sadness. One thing I've learned relatively recently, is that there isn't anything wrong with a little sadness. Sometimes the melancoly piles up and there really is nothing to be done about it other than to get on with the chore of feeling it until it is gone.

Our current culture seems to treat the concept of being unhappy as a disease to be cured. A state that is seemingly an inescapable well which requires people with degrees or brain altering chemicals to scratch your way out of, and for some people maybe that's true. But in my own case the real issue seemed to be that I was simply unwilling to be sad, too eager to distract myself out of it, a serial sadness procrastinator.

So my first piece of advice to you, is that if you can manage to not be miserable or afraid while feeling nostalgic, remorseful or inconsolably bereaved, then you're halfway there.

Happiness itself is a trickier thing.

When I was young I made many blunders, and by young I mean less old than I am today. At the time I thought it very important that I ought never to repeat these specific blunders, and taken a step further, theorized that the key to happiness was to never make such a colossal dolt out of myself ever again.

And so it was that I always endeavored to remember the most embarrassing of my misteps. At night my brain would constantly prod the soft underbelly of my ego with the barbs of my most embarassing tales, presumably to keep myself motivated to avoid them.

This proved to be a powerful force, as I grew older the incidences of my rash behaviors seemed to lessen. However, I was not measurably happier. I was still tortured at night by the horrors of past, avoidable deeds that I was now powerless to undo. I began to spend my nights analyzing the day ahead, looking for any potential problems that might be puzzled out in advance. The thought being, that if I could solve or avoid any problems altogether, that this would lead to less problems, and a problem free life certainly sounded like the prescription for happiness I sought.

The problem with this entire course of action, is that one of the few things in life that I am sure makes me happy is solving problems. My prethinking of things and meticulous planning, would often lead to the complete lack of a problem to be solved in the first place. Which you would think would make me happy, as avoiding a problem altogether was surely the fastest and surest way to solve it.

As it turns out it didn't. It gave me all the satisfaction one would get by not purchasing a crossword puzzle book.

What's more, is that my strategy of constantly focusing on problems and obsessing about avoiding any potential puzzles seemed to have the nasty side effect of me completely ignoring the things in my life that were going fine. Those things which had nearly zero potential to spawn an unforseen knot in my life were all but invisible to me.

I apologize for subjecting you to the logical journey it took to get me here, I only include to provide a bit of background for the second half of being happy, since if I had come out and said it right away it would have seemed to be something I skimmed off a roadside greeting card, but here goes.

"Remember to remember the good stuff."

Sounds simple enough, I know. But the reason most people don't do it, is it is honestly a boring chore. Recollecting your day and cataloging those bits that made you smile is a non-trivial process in the day and age we live in. Our lives are packed with so many details, events and variables. Our brains intake so much information each day that scouring through that at the end of each day has all the appeal of searching for a retainer in a pizza parlor dumpster.

That's why a lot of people don't do it. They have enough problems in the now that stopping to squint at the recent past is a luxury many simply can't afford.

Now some people, I suspect are simply naturally better at retaining these thoughts, and I envy them for this ability, but at least for myself it must be a conscious effort to do. I often am mean to these people since it seems unlikely they'll remember it anyways.

The important lesson here is that your brain is not infinite. It has limitations, and the way you frame your life for it effects what you'll remember, what you'll become, and in the end, what you are. Your brain will memorize that what you hold to be important. The things you think back on and mull.

In this way the things you focus on in life are the things that you will have to decorate the halls of your mind. It really is up to you if you choose to obsess yourself with social slights and unchangable painful moments or all the lovlier bits.

Personally, I'm shooting for a 40/40 mix, with 20 percent saved for my favorite bits of irrelevant pop culture.